Penn is making its own luck in win streak

It was no coincidence that the better team committed fewer amount of turnovers, as the past has shown. NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- In the early portion of the season, seemingly nothing went right for the Quakers. Now Penn wins by watching other teams stumble. Saturday, for the second time in as many weeks, Penn turned the game by capitalizing on its opponents' misfortune. The rain and wind made Saturday's game closer than it might otherwise have been, but the moral was the same -- the team that played better also appeared to be the lucky one. Bad play breeds bad luck -- it has become the common theme for Penn football this season. Yale's fumbled snap on the one-yard line with a chance to tie the game in the fourth quarter broke the Elis. The disastrous turnover, which could be blamed on the treacherous field conditions, rescued Penn from the grips of a second-half disaster on the magnitude of the Connecticut weather. During their early season struggles it was the Quakers who were finding themselves on the other end of costly turnovers that Quakers coach Al Bagnoli called "flukes." Dartmouth kicker Dave Regula's return for a touchdown, two missed short field goals by Jeremiah Greathouse against Bucknell, tipped Matt Rader passes that more times ended as interceptions than not -- there were as many bits of misfortune in the Quakers losses as there were inexcusable penalties. Yale and Brown both had first-and-goal near the one-yard line with the opportunity to erase their deficits, and on both occasions, the teams managed to fumble the ball right into Penn's arms. If either team had plunged in for a score, the Quakers might not be within shouting distance of an Ivy League title. Instead, the Quakers dominated the rest of each game while watching the opposition crumble. "Our defense made some plays," Bagnoli said. "That goal line stand after the penalty was a huge play." The planets must have realigned themselves to cause this cosmic shift in the Quakers' fortunes which has transformed the "weird" offensive turnovers of yore into Penn's big stands on defense. Or maybe by playing better football, the Quakers are putting themselves in position to be recipients of others' misfortunes. "We were running our blast play at the goal line, and we didn't get the snap," Yale coach Jack Siedlecki said. "We're [down] 14-7 with first and goal at the one-yard line, you have got to find a way to win. You have got to believe you are going to." Siedlecki attributed the result to Penn's belief that they are going to win when they step on the field, something that Yale doesn't have. Psychology is as good as any other explanation for why the Quakers held onto the leather while a variety of Elis players, including the center, quarterback, running back and punter, treated the ball like a greased pig. The game and the poor field conditions should have been the same for both sides, but neither team played like it. The Quakers played with confidence in their footing while Yale tacklers suffered from their own trepidation of the mud pit that was the Yale Bowl. Just as with their abilities to hold onto the ball, the Penn players looked luckier to stay on their feet only because they were attacking with more ferocity than their slippery-footed opponents. "We had an opportunity to tie that game, and their kid (RB Jim Finn) stepped up and made a 90-yard run," Siedlecki said. "They weren't doing anything more than we were doing in that second half, but they made that big play." Jim Finn's heroics and Rader's one ugly interception aside, Saturday's game was a study in predestination. The better team, Penn, played like it, and the weak opponent, Yale, played like a team that is now deservedly 0-5 at home. The turnovers, like the perceived "luck," reflected the team's respective skills.

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