For the Penn football team, this week has been about taking the final steps out from under the cloud that hung over the program when it traveled to New York last weekend. Now, with three days of practice under their belts, the Quakers (4-1, 2-0 Ivy) say they are fully ready for their team's meeting with Yale -- the only other Ivy League team that has yet to lose in conference play this season.
"We're getting things accomplished," senior linebacker Ric San Doval said. "We're all buckling down, concentrating when we need to concentrate."
The stakes are high for every game in the Ancient Eight, but for Pennthe final five weeks are even more important. San Doval called his team's remaining games -- against the Elis, Brown, Princeton, Harvard and Cornell -- a "murderer's row," but said that he is relishing each of the tests.
"This why you came here," he said. "This is why you came to Penn, this is why you train in the offseason -- to be playing big games come Week 5, 6, 7."
Penn running back Sam Mathews, however, said that every conference game has to be of equal importance.
"You never go into a game taking your opponent lightly, especially in the Ivy League, with the parity that there is," he said. "You lose one along the road, regardless of whether it's Harvard or Columbia, and you're still in trouble."
Nonetheless, a clash of unbeatens in late October certainly qualifies as a big game. Yet despite losing two offensive stars to graduation, it is Yale -- and not preseason heavyweights Brown and Harvard -- that stands at the top of the standings alongside Penn.
San Doval is not surprised, though.
"They always have a great amount of talent," he said.
Quakers coach Al Bagnoli agrees.
"They save their best play for league play," he said of the Elis. "Out of conference, it's very uncharacteristic of them being 0-3."
All three were close games, however, and losses to teams that are also doing better than the experts said they would.
"Holy Cross is a much better team than anybody thought at the beginning of the year, obviously Lehigh is Lehigh, and probably the shocker is San Diego," Bagnoli said. "You think [Yale is] going to win that game the majority of the time, but even San Diego's having a good year."
The Toreros are 6-1 this season, including a 17-14 home win over the Elis and a 20-17 loss at Princeton.
Yale coach Jack Siedlecki would prefer to not have to worry about small margins of victory.
"We have lost three very close football games, and if we are going to make a run at things, we need to close the deal and win the close games down the stretch," Siedlecki said.
Yet the usual method of judging opponents through their game film has been severely complicated this year by the rainstorms that have soaked the Northeast in recent weeks.
In his preparation for Yale, Bagnoli said that "Cornell is a good film weather-wise, but Dartmouth is a disaster, so you can't take that."
Siedlecki has seen it all up close, and said that his team's inconsistency has been in part due to its youth.
"Last year was a very veteran team," he said. "This year's team has a lot of new faces that are trying to make things happen and make people take notice."
Even with the turnover on the Elis' offense this year, Bagnoli said that recent Penn-Yale clashes can still serve as a guide for his team.
"We've played very, very tough games," he said. "We know they're athletic, and they have a nice scheme, and they have physical kids, and their kids understand they are going to have to play well."
San Doval said that his team knows the time has come to step up and meet that challenge, especially with the trauma of Kyle Ambrogi's death and burial now fully behind the team.
"For those three-and-a-half hours on Saturdays it's pretty much the only time we get away from this kind of stuff.," he said.
He described practice this week as "a little more relaxed than it was last week," with "a good amount of focus."
Mathews said that "getting back into the normal schedule" has helped.
He added that regardless of the circumstances, the goal remains the same.
"We're just trying to stay on course and take care of our business," he said. "Hopefully at the end there will be a championship."
