Football blows out Cornell, wins Ivy title

ITHACA, N.Y. - Kris Ryan ran for 243 yards and four touchdowns and Gavin Hoffman threw for 330 yards and two scores as the Penn football team whipped Cornell 45-15 today to secure their second Ivy League championship in three years. The Quakers (7-3, 6-1 Ivy League) broke out of the gate quickly and managed to hold the Big Red (5-5, 5-2) to just one touchdown in the first three quarters of play. "I thought we played the best game we have all year and we picked a pretty good team to do it against," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said after seeing his team churn out 628 yards of total offense. "I don't think anybody in the league has held [Cornell] down to 15 points." The Red and Blue scored touchdowns on their first two possessions on drive of 74 and 80 yards. Sophomore fullback. Ryan scored the second one - his first of four on the day - with a 39-yard scamper on which he ran nearly untouched around left tackle. The Big Red made it look like a game when they scored with five minutes left in the first quarter, but were unable to find the end zone again until late in the fourth, when nothing really mattered. The Quakers scored 31 unanswered points over the next two and a half quarters to seal the game and the championship. Even though the Quakers went into the locker room with a 28-7 lead at halftime, they remained wary of a Cornell team that has won all five of its games this year by coming back in the fourth quarter. "That's all we kept on talking about," senior defensive back Joey Alofaituli said of Cornell's propensity for comebacks. "[The Big Red] were thinking that they were going to come from behind on offense because that's what they've been doing all year." The Quakers defense put the Big Red's comeback hopes on ice for good when, on Cornell's second possession of the third quarter, the Red and Blue stopped Cornell quarterback Ricky Rahne's attempt to sneak the ball into the end zone from the half-yard line was stopped short. The Quakers offense then engineered a 99-yard touchdown drive to take a 35-7 lead and put the game - and the Ivy League trophy - away for good. News and Notes: Junior wideout Rob Milanese had nine catches for 117 yards to set Penn single-season records in both those categories...Senior kicker Jason Feinberg kicked six extra points and a field goal, finishing his career as Penn's all-time scoring leader with 218...Hoffman's 330 yards passing made him the first Quakers quarterback to throw for over 3,000 yards in a season. But, with 3,214 yards passing on the year, the junior fell just 39 yards shy of the single-season Ivy League record.