GAME ANALYSIS: Football's first-half hijinx too much to tackle in second

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- The Quakers offense, suffering from a severe multiple personality disorder this season, is digging holes in the first half that its third-quarter efficiency is not good enough to erase. While turn-overs were the Quakers' undoing in the first half against Dartmouth, it was poor average starting field position and an inability to move the ball in the first half that buried Penn at Bucknell. In the first two games of the season, the Quakers have been outscored in the first half by a combined score of 43-3. "This is the most frustrated I have been," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "We're not making plays and we're getting caught in stupid situations that are really killing us." Poor special teams pinned the Red and Blue deep in their own end and disabled the offense from generating any productivity. "The key to the first half was field position," Bucknell coach Tom Gadd said. "We kept them out of field position, and it allowed our defense to pressure them and put them in a position where it's hard to handle the ball." It wasn't until their fifth possession with six minutes to go in the half that Penn achieved a first down. This 16-yard drive was eventually stymied, as were most others, by an inefficient running game which mustered just 17 first-half yards on six carries by Melvin Alexander. Penn junior quarterback Matt Rader overthrew his receivers, who consistently dropped balls. Rader's first completion of the game did not come until 23 seconds remained in the first half. "I feel I put the ball there a couple of times and it should have been caught, but it was dropped," Rader said. "We weren't really doing the right plays, we weren't mentally sharp, we weren't passing balls, I wasn't making proper reads, so it was just total inefficiency in the first half." By the time Penn got the ball back a sixth time in the first half, they were already in a 20-0 hole with just 29 seconds left on the clock. A good kickoff return finally gave the Quakers decent field position, and Rader engineered the only true Quakers drive of the first half, marching the ball from the Penn 41 to the Bucknell 25. The 34-yard drive led to Penn's only points of the first half, a 41-yard field goal by Jeremiah Greathouse. By the time the Quakers headed into the locker room, they were already staring at a 17-point deficit, due largely to an offense that yielded just 55 yards of total offense. The Quakers three first-quarter possessions were all three-and-out, netting just one yard of total offense. The task that lay ahead for Bagnoli was tricky: motivate his team to come back from its second consecutive poor opening half and score enough in the second half to complete the comeback, something they were unable to accomplish against Dartmouth. "You can't put it in print," Bagnoli said of his halftime speech. "We screamed at our kids because they were playing like they shouldn't be playing. It was an absolutely ridiculous first half on both sides. We messed up in key situations. We got kids who can make plays, and we got to make plays. We shouldn't have given up 20 points in the first half. It's the same thing as last week." Whatever Bagnoli said to his team at halftime got his team going. His defense held the Bison offense and his special teams not only stopped fumbling, but forced a fumbled punt and a fumbled kick return. The defense and special teams play provided the momentum that the offense needed, and established good field position consistently for the Quakers in the third quarter. Starting location was evidently the difference early, as all four of the Quakers' third-quarter possessions started in Bucknell territory, leading to 13 unanswered points. Ten points came within the first five minutes of the third quarter, and the Penn comeback was well underway. "We used spread formations a little bit more to spread their defense around in the second half," Rader said. "In the first half, we were mostly in pretty tight formations, didn't spread the field. We didn't use the receivers to our advantage to get those throwing lanes." A big boost for the Quakers' offense was the play of junior fullback Bruce Rossignol, who rushed for 32 yards in the second half on eight carries. Senior receiver John James, who had four receptions for 43 yards, was a favorite target of Rader in the second half. Rader passed for 114 of his 148 total yards in the second half. While the Quakers offensive production was picking up, illegal shift, motion and procedure penalties made it difficult for the Quakers to score in the second half. One such penalty called back a 21-yard touchdown catch by Brian Bonanno, while a false start penalty pushed the Quakers back after progressing to the Bucknell three-yard line, resulting in three points instead of seven. "We're just making a ton of mental mistakes from kids who should not be making mental mistakes," Bagnoli said. "We get a touchdown called back because we are not lined up in the right formation, we get an illegal shift on a third-and-goal." At the start of the fourth quarter, Penn took over on their own 21-yard line, and finally proved that they could put together a time-consuming, chain-moving drive. Seven minutes and 18 plays later, Greathouse lined up for a 22-yard field goal that would draw the Quakers to within one point with over seven minutes to play. But he missed wide right for the second time of game. Thereafter, the Red and Blue were no longer the beneficiaries of blessed field position. Just as he did on a critical fourth down play late against Dartmouth, Rader was picked off on a pass intended for Brian Bonanno with just over two minutes to go in the game. "I just don't have the answers why we can't put it in the end zone," Rader said. "We're getting there for field goals, so we're in position to score, but we just didn't capitalize."