Quakers win 21st straight, set record

ITHACA, N.Y. -- At the entrance to the visitor's locker room, Dan Staffieri, the plaid-wearing Penn football booster, held a towel with "Play Like a Champion Today" written across it. And, as each Quaker passed him heading into the locker room, Staffieri said "you did" to each one. He was exactly right. Penn fought back from a 14-point deficit to defeat Cornell 18-14 Saturday at Schoellkopf Field. The Quakers (9-0, 7-0 Ivy League) become the first Ivy League team ever to post back-to-back undefeated seasons, and set the all-time Division I-AA record for consecutive wins with 21. As the Penn players passed Staffieri into the locker room, there was no wild celebration, no yelling, no jumping. It was a far too emotionally draining game for that. Just moments before, they had participated in the most bitter, competitive, tense, controversial, and exciting game of the winning streak. "I give our kids a lot of credit," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "Today for certain was not one of the best efforts we've had in terms of execution, and I think Cornell was the cause of lots of our problems." "I don't think in our minds there was ever a doubt we'd come back," senior co-captain Michael Turner said. "We just refused to lose." Everything came down to the last two minutes. A third-and-19 pass from quarterback Mark DeRosa to wide receiver Mark Fabish with 2 minutes, 49 seconds to play moved Penn to the Cornell 1. On third down, running back Terrance Stokes ducked behind a block by linebacker-turned-fullback Tim Gage and ran into the end zone. Elated, he ripped off his helmet and threw it as far as he could. With the extra point, Penn led 18-14. Cornell wasn't dead yet. With 1:40 on the clock the game was far from over, and the personal foul for excessive celebration charged to Stokes had Doug Miller kicking from the Penn 20. Aaron Berryman ran the kick back to the Big Red 46, and Cornell began driving. First to the Penn 47. Then to the Penn 39. Then to the Penn 31. It was on third and two from the Penn 31 when lightning struck. Running a streak down the left sideline, Berryman collided with an official and fell at the same moment quarterback Per Larson lofted the ball toward the end zone. Penn cornerback Jamie Daniels ran under it and dropped to one knee. With 1:07 to play, the game was effectively over. "I just wanted us to get into a position where we could possibly score," Cornell coach Jim Hofher said. "That was taken away from us. He clearly collided with the official. We saw it. The guy's either in a bad position or he shouldn't be out there if he can't get out of the way." The game had seemed over eight minutes into the contest when just like last year's Penn-Cornell game, the Big Red took an early 14-0 lead. After the Quakers' first drive ended in a Chris Hanson interception of DeRosa, Cornell's Chad Levitt did what no other running back had done against Penn all season. He broke a 67-yard touchdown run, shedding tacklers at midfield and outrunning Daniels along the right sideline. The stunned silence on the Penn bench only got quieter when a Chris Allen punt return put Cornell on the Penn 18. Five plays later, Levitt had his second touchdown and Cornell had the two-touchdown lead. "They were a little shellshocked because they haven't given up a long run the entire season," Bagnoli said. "We were all a little bit surprised that A, he did it, and B, that he ran away from a couple of our kids." But then, the vaunted Penn defense shut down Levitt and the Big Red offense. Every Cornell drive until the fourth quarter resulted in a punt, except one that ended with the first half. Although Levitt finished with 157 yards on 29 carries to lead the Ivy League in rushing, 75 yards came in the first eight minutes. Cornell's two quarterbacks, Larson and Steve Joyce, were a combined 7 of 27 for 60 yards. With Cornell's offense stalled, it was up to the Penn offense to whittle away at the lead. Stokes began to go to work, getting 94 of his 120 yards in the first half to take him over 1,000 yards for the second season in a row. But each time Penn got close, something would happen. DeRosa, playing with torn ligaments in his thumb on his throwing hand and having a lot of trouble judging the wind, threw three interceptions, all in Cornell territory. The redshirt freshman was also getting battered by a consistent Big Red blitz. Twice the Quakers turned the ball over on downs in the Big Red side of the field. At the end of the first quarter, Glockner hit a 41-yard field goal to make the score 14-3, and the score was the same as the half ended. In the third quarter, neither team could move the ball until DeRosa found high-school teammate Fabish streaking down the left sideline and delivered the ball for a 54-yard touchdown strike. On the two-point conversion, DeRosa rolled right and hit flanker Leo Congeni to bring Penn within a field goal. It was the DeRosa-Fabish connection that would set up the final score. Despite the injured thumb, DeRosa completed 24 of 40 passes for 360 yards, breaking Marty Vaughn's Penn record of 326 against Dartmouth in 1974. Bagnoli had backup Steve Teodecki warming up the whole game, but DeRosa refused to admit any pain. "I kept asking him every time he came out," Bagnoli said. "He's a tough kid sometimes to get a straight answer out of. He kept saying 'feels great,' so I kept telling Steve 'stay loose.' " DeRosa wasn't the only injured Quaker. Wide receiver Miles Macik, tight end Matt Tonelli, Turner, Congeni, Stokes, and Sheldon Philip-Guide -- playing for injured cornerback Kevin Allen -- all left the game at times with various ailments. Macik was limping nearly the entire game, but still managed to catch seven passes. Congeni came back from a brutal hit early in the game to catch four more passes. These injuries were just one result of an extremely physical game that saw big hits and big talk from both sides of the line -- which by no coincidence was one of Cornell's goals for the game. "We just put it in our heads that we were going to go out there and hit them as hard as we could on every play," Cornell linebacker John Vitullo said. "I think it was evident just from watching us play out there. That's as physical as we've been all year." In the end, Penn's winning ways would prevail, with the streak and everything that went with it surviving the trek to upstate New York. "We just felt that if the opportunity presented itself, we were going to take advantage of it," Stokes said. "Luckily the ball bounced our way a lot of times today, and we just stayed on top of them and never let up."