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Cornell senior quarterback Bill Lazor is sacked by Penn junior defensive end Michael Turner. Lazor is sacked by Penn senior defensive end Dave Betten. Lazor is sacked by?fill in the blank with the Quaker defensive lineman of your choice. Lazor learned the hard way on Saturday that you can't throw the ball when you are lying flat on your back. But that was not the only reason the Quakers were able to come from behind to beat the Big Red. The real explanation was that the Penn defensive front seven completely dominated the Cornell offensive machine in the second half. "It comes to a point when we just say, 'No more,' " Penn junior free safety Nick Morris said of the second half shutout. "I really can't explain it." For the second consecutive week, the Quaker "D" pitched a shutout for the final 30 minutes of the game. This time, the undersized front seven outran, outhustled and outplayed the vaunted Cornell offense. In the third quarter, Penn did not allow the Big Red to do anything at all. Cornell's statistics for this 15-minute period speak for themselves. The Big Red had zero net offensive yards (not an inch gained during their five possessions). Also, Lazor was sacked twice and completed only one of his five pass attempts – but it was caught by a player wearing the wrong uniform – Morris. "We came into halftime and said, 'We've got to pick it up,' " Betten said. "We were playing all right up until the half, but we had to play a lot better in the second half. I think it is the confidence that we've created in ourselves in the past few weeks in making a lot of big plays – great plays." Betten is referring to that Morris interception in the middle of the third quarter that single-handedly turned the game around. Just as last week when the Quakers seemed to wake up after Turner caused a key Harvard fumble, so did Penn again on Saturday when Morris picked off a Lazor lob. The pass was intended for Big Red junior wide receiver Erik Bjerke, but the ball never got there. Unfortunately for Cornell, the ball was underthrown by a few yards, landing right in Morris's lap. This play sparked a Penn offense that had been dormant up until that point. "Nick made a hell of a play on that ball," Penn senior quarterback Jim McGeehan said about the interception. "He stepped up and made the biggest play of the year." But the play did not start in the defensive backfield. It did not even start when Lazor took the snap. It really began early in the game, on Cornell's second drive of the day. After a play action fake, Penn senior linebacker Andy Berlin pressured and hit Lazor just as he let go of the ball. That hit, and every hit Lazor received after it, reminded the Big Red's signal-caller that it hurts to play quarterback. It hurts to hold onto the pigskin as long as you can. And it was this pressure from the defensive line that was the difference in the game. "[The defensive pressure] was unbelievable," Morris said. "If we were covering guys, we didn't have to cover them for more than two or three seconds. It makes it a lot easier on [the defensive backs]." "[The defensive pressure] was very important," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "Anytime you can put pressure on the quarterback, I think it rattles people. Lazor's a terrific quarterback, but if you keep putting pressure on him it's really hard to get in sync." The Penn defensive line had been attacking the opposing quarterbacks all season, racking up 34 sacks in the first nine games. So the Big Red had to be ready for the aggressive Quaker defensive line. But nothing could have prepared them, or Lazor, for the beating they would take from the Quaker defense. For the game, the front seven racked up nine sacks. And on each one, Lazor was driven into Franklin Field's hard artificial turf. The Cornell offensive line, which outweighs the Penn defensive line by an average of almost 25 pounds a man, might have expected that it could just throw the smaller Quakers around. After all, the Big Red only allowed Lazor to be sacked once when these same two teams met last year in Ithaca. But this year was different. These are the 10-0 Quakers. "Their line was really big, but they have bad lateral movement," Betten said of the Cornell offensive line. "We were able to use our quickness to get around them." In the final quarter of the game, the Big Red had only two possessions. On their first attempt to regain the lead after the Quakers had tied the game at 14, Lazor threw two incomplete passes and was sacked once by Turner before Cornell was forced to punt. This marked the sixth-consecutive time the Big Red went three plays and out in the second half. With about five and a half minutes remaining, the Big Red had the ball with one last attempt to win the contest. They faced a daunting task, as they had not registered one first down up to that point in the second half – and now Cornell had to march 76 yards to win the game. On a crucial third-and-10 from the Penn 29, senior tailback Pete Fitzpatrick caught a Lazor pass before being dragged down from behind by Morris two yards short of the first-down mark. Fitzpatrick's eight-yard gain set up a fourth-and-two situation. Lazor handed the ball to freshman tailback Chad Levitt. Levitt took the ball and followed his two leading blockers out of the backfield and headed straight ahead where he was met by Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week Betten and a host of Penn defenders. Levitt was a yard short, and the Quaker defense came up with not only another game-saving play, but a championship-saving play as well. "[Cornell] wanted it so bad," Betten said. "I got hit a couple of times pretty hard on that play. The tackle came out and hit me really hard. Luckily I just dished him off. I was looking for other people's reactions because I didn't know where [Levitt] fell. When I saw our linebackers jumping around, I stayed there and just clung onto his legs as hard as I could." The Quaker defense came up with a big play on every down in the second half. Cornell amassed an unbelievable minus-one yards on the ground in the final 30 minutes of play. Maybe the Big Red should have passed on that final play. But maybe Lazor then would have been sacked by?fill in the blank with the Quaker defensive lineman of choice.

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