PRINCETON, N.J.
WIDE RIGHT. It has been the storyline all season for the Penn football team. But after Saturday's nail-biter at Princeton Stadium, those two words have secured a place in the storied Penn-Princeton rivalry.
This time Penn fans have a missed field goal to thank rather than to blame for the game's outcome. More appropriately, Red and Blue faithful can thank J.J. Stanton's false start penalty on Derek Zoch's first field-goal attempt -- a 21-yard kick that ended up, you guessed it, wide right.
Much to the chagrin of Princeton coach Roger Hughes, Zoch had a second chance. The freshman from Kinnelon, N.J., delivered, giving Penn its 20th straight Ivy League win.
A lucky break for Quakers Nation.
A lucky break for a team whose offense in the first half looked like death warmed over.
While wide right might be the story of the game in the end, three-and-out was the Quakers' tale of the first half.
In the amount of time it took the once-feared Penn offense to record a first down, the Tigers notched eight of their own while putting six points on the board in the process.
For nearly 25 minutes, the Quakers saw six possessions and gained positive yardage on only three. On those three possesions, Penn totaled just 16 yards. But the Quakers lost 16 yards on the other three posessions for a net gain of zero.
For six possessions, Penn running back Sam Mathews saw five carries for a net gain of eight yards. Meanwhile his Princeton counterparts, Jon Veach and Branden Benson, combined for 19 carries and a net gain of 101 yards.
This was not the result anyone would be expecting against a Princeton squad that had the seventh-ranked run defense in the Ivy League.
Penn's passing game wasn't much better.
Pat McDermott threw a total of six passes and completed just one -- a 4-yard lob to Gabe Marabella. On the other side, Princeton signal caller Matt Verbit completed six of 11 passes for 42 yards. Verbit even gave the Quakers a break, sending a short third-down pass right into the hands of Penn's Chad Slapnicka. But the Red and Blue couldn't take advantage of the turnover, letting yet another opportunity slip away.
Why couldn't they make anything happen?
Penn coach Al Bagnoli didn't have an answer.
"We've been very, very erratic. At times we've been the most efficient we've ever been in the tenure I've been here. And other times it looks like we can't get out of the huddle right," Bagnoli said. "For me to say I know what's causing it, I wish did because I'd try to fix it, but I don't know."
McDermott, who has proven that he can lead his team through the good times and the bad this season, said the team struggled to build momentum early, due in large part to Princeton's dominance of the field-position battle.
"In the first half they did a pretty good job of controlling the field position," McDermott said. "But that's no excuse for us, we still have to execute our plays. We just came out and it looked like we were flat. There was no spark."
All but one of the Tigers' first five drives started in Penn territory. The other was the opening kickoff.
The Quakers, on the other hand, started one drive all day on the Princeton side of the field -- at the Orange and Black's 46, to be exact. The result of that drive? A 5-yard loss on the ground, two incomplete passes and a false-start penalty.
By all accounts, Penn had no business winning this football game. But when you win 20 in a row, something just seems to be working in the right place at the right time. This time his name was Dan Castles.
"We were just three-and-out, three-and-out and we needed a spark," McDermott said. "We finally got one when Dan made a big catch on the left sideline. I think from that point on we didn't have that much trouble moving the ball."
Castles' 32-yard snare late in the second quarter was Penn's first first-down of the game, and the beginning of an 89-yard march to the end zone. The drive took the Quakers just three minutes, and showed yet again how dangerous McDermott can be under pressure.
As he showed last week against Brown, McDermott can run a two-minute drill with the best of them.
The junior signal caller did it again in the fourth quarter to close the gap to 15-13. Working out of the no-huddle, McDermott marched the Quakers 66 yards for a score in just under two minutes.
"When we pick the tempo up it helps us," McDermott said of the pair of touchdown drives.
In a game where Penn realistically had only four successful drives -- the opening possession of the third quarter ended in a controversial fumble call -- making the most of every possession was crucial. And Penn failed in this department in the early going.
Princeton plays its football much the same way it plays basketball -- efficient, accurate and time-consuming. The Quakers had 12 possessions, not counting the 18 seconds at the end of the game. They went three-and-out on the first half of them. Fortunately for Penn, the Tigers' historically anemic offense was not able to capitalize for the most part.
Penn simply cannot afford a repeat performance next week against a much more powerful Harvard team. If the Quakers want another Ivy title -- and they certainly have the skill to lock it up in convincing fashion -- they have to keep Josh Appell on the sidelines and out of the punting spot.
Jeff Shafer is a junior marketing and management concentrator from Columbia Falls, Mont. and Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jshafer@wharton.upenn.edu.
