FOOTBALL NOTEBOOK: Homecoming activities affected game

For fans and alumni, homecoming can be the most glorious day of the year. For Penn coach Al Bagnoli, it is something of a pain in the neck. In the locker room after the Quakers' 14-6 win over Yale Saturday, Bagnoli was a picture of exhaustion -- and not just because his team had to struggle to grind out a sloppy victory. He looked like a man who had just been through a whirlwind of a week. Pregame and halftime activities on the field, a delayed kickoff time, the return of ex-players dating back to the George Munger era and the traditional homecoming hype all made it next to impossible for the Quakers to maintain their normal routine. The TV timeouts resulting from the Prism broadcast did not help either. "There's not a normal flow to the game," Bagnoli said. "It's something that becomes a little bit of a hindrance. And there's some added pressure to play well because you have so many people coming back." · The entire Penn defense deserved a game ball Saturday for allowing Yale just one touchdown despite the Elis' numerous forays into Penn territory. Two standouts were safety Nick Morris and defensive end Tom McGarrity. Morris was named Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week after racking up 13 tackles, two interceptions and a fumble recovery. He returned his first pickoff 30 yards to set up a Mark DeRosa scoring pass to Miles Macik, which gave Penn a 14-0 lead going into intermission. Morris commended the Quaker front line for harassing the Yale quarterbacks into making poor decisions. "They made things happen," he said. "You have to give most of the credit to them. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time." One of those front-liners was McGarrity. A junior first-year starter, he was inserted into '93 co-captain Dave Betten's spot on the defensive line at the beginning of the year. Replacing Betten, a first-team all-Ivy player, is not an easy task, but McGarrity is coming into his own. His stats for the game -- two tackles and two pass deflections -- do not accurately tell the story. McGarrity was constantly wreaking havoc in the Yale backfield. "Tommy probably played his best game to date," Bagnoli said. "He was relentless. He did a real nice job in terms of penetration and disrupting things." · Morris was the best defensive player in the Ivies last weekend, but he also took center stage for a truly frustrating Penn offensive series. While the Quakers' offense struggled most of the game to grind out yardage, one sequence stood out from the rest. After a Yale fumble deep in its own territory, two pass interference penalties gave Penn first down at the Yale 1. Running back Terrance Stokes, who gained 155 yards on 34 carries, was stuffed for no gain. Then Morris, an ex-quarterback, came in to try to sneak the ball over. He, too, went nowhere. Stokes tried again. Nothing. Morris got another shot on fourth down, but his attempt to go over the top was squashed. But was it really? Morris, and virtually everybody in attendance -- as well as those watching on PRISM -- thought he had scored. "I was in," he said. "The Prism TV tapes showed I was in. I guess it doesn't matter now." · A prime area of concern coming out of the Yale contest is Penn's kicking game. Kicker Andy Glockner missed both his field-goal attempts, from 39 and 29 yards. Had he made either, Yale would not have had a chance to tie in the closing seconds with a touchdown and two-point conversion. Bagnoli did not place the bulk of the blame on Glockner, however. "We just had problems protecting," he said. "Andy could have conceivably still hit them, but it becomes a lot tougher when you're approaching the ball and all of a sudden you see an opposite-colored jersey coming at you." The kicking game breakdowns were just part of a set of problems that contributed to Penn's overall sloppy performance, according to Bagnoli. Problems with so-called "little things" in a variety of phases hindered the Quakers' ability to put points on the board "Maybe you saw it in the kicking game," Bagnoli said. "We didn't do the little things correctly in our two-minute defense -- things we practice an awful lot, that for some reason we just didn't do a good job with. Hopefully, we'll correct them." · Linebacker Kevin DeLuca had 13 tackles against the Elis, including two sacks at the end that snuffed out Yale's final drive. He sat out practice yesterday with a bruised thigh, and according to Bagnoli, his status is currently day-to-day. Bagnoli thinks he will be ready to play this Saturday at Princeton.