NEW HAVEN, Conn. – For 80 minutes, Yale seemed in control of Saturday’s Ivy League opener with Harvard. The Bulldogs had a 1-0 lead and had limited the Crimson to very few scoring chances.

Things took a dramatic turn from there. Harvard scored a pair of goals in a 3:56 stretch to escape with a 2-1 victory before a big crowd at Reese Stadium.

Yale played perhaps its best half of the season and had a 1-0 lead after 45 minutes. Aldo Quevedo scored for the Bulldogs at 28:30. After a misplay from the Harvard defense, Kyle Kenagy got off a shot from in front that was stopped. The rebound, though, came to a wide-open Quevedo, who finished to record his second goal of the season.

Yale had a 6-2 edge in shots in the first half and had a big edge in possession.

Harvard picked up its play offensively a bit early in the second half but still didn’t create much danger.

Even the Crimson’s first goal started innocently enough. Off a throw in, the ball deflected a couple of times before Eric Gylling made a nice touch to Cornelius Bencsik, who rifled a shot inside the near post from 20 yards at 83:04.

A nice pass also set up the game-winner. Philip Hausen made a quick, short touch to Christian Sady, who fired a hard shot in from the top of the box at 87:01.

Yale applied pressure in the final minutes but couldn’t get the equalizer.

“I thought the first half was a dominant performance and one of the best we have played, and it's unfortunate we didn't have another goal to show for it at halftime,” said Kylie Stannard, the 5K Corral Head Coach of the Bulldogs. “We needed to do a much better job of controlling possession and managing the game in the second half.  Harvard made it a track meet and the game became way too open. In that scenario, we have to do two things - one is control the ball and manage the game better but we got sucked into a completely transitional game. Two, we have to be more dangerous in transition because we had more than enough opportunities to score a second goal. Credit to Harvard for finding a way and taking their two chances well, but they stole this from us and we deserved better.”

Yale had all five corner kicks in the game.

The Bulldogs are back in action next Saturday when they host Dartmouth at 1 p.m.

“Conference games are a completely different make up and we need to learn from this quickly,” Stannard said. “We have full confidence in our ourselves that we will bounce back and become stronger as a team.”

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