It's all over

BOSTON -- For about two and a half minutes on Saturday, the Penn football team had reason to believe that it had snapped out of whatever had been ailing it during losses to Brown and Princeton.

It took that long for the Quakers to mount their first drive of the game, culminating in a career-long 39-yard field goal by Derek Zoch that wobbled its way over the crossbar by about the length of a cheesesteak.

The rest of the afternoon, however, was a feast for Harvard. It began with two touchdowns over the next five minutes of play and ended in a 29-3 rout for the home team in front of a Senior Day crowd of 15,688 at Harvard Stadium that was split by both teams' fans.

"We couldn't hold them," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "They go down the field and they score, and all the momentum that we had on offense just kind of went out the window. That first half was on all counts just a very forgettable first half for us."

It was the first time that Penn failed to score a touchdown in a game since losing at Villanova, 17-3, in 2002, and the first time that happened in an Ivy League game since a 33-0 loss at Harvard in 1997.

While plenty of accolades were given to Harvard's seniors before their final home game, it was a sophomore who stole the show. Crimson quarterback Liam O'Hagan gave a commanding performance, throwing for 293 yards and three touchdowns and running for 61 yards and another score.

All three of O'Hagan's touchdown passes were caught by senior fullback Kelly Widman, raising Widman's total for the season from two to five.

"We were just trying to keep [Penn] off-balance with our play-calling," Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. "There was nothing specific that we were trying to exploit."

When Penn had the ball, its running game was silenced by a stout Crimson defensive line which held the Quakers to 59 yards on the ground.

"The game plan was to shut down their running game, put them into third-and-long situations, turn loose our pass rushers," Murphy said. "Eventually we felt like we'd be able to force a turnover or two."

Bagnoli said he saw it coming.

"It's been the exact same defensive template that we've seen, and I would do the exact same thing against us," Bagnoli said. "People are putting eight in the box, playing with a man safety free -- which is really a ninth man in the box. They're saying, quarterbacks and receivers, you've got to beat us."

Penn quarterback Pat McDermott could not answer that challenge. He managed only 18 completions on 38 attempts for 158 yards and was intercepted twice. It was the second consecutive week in which McDermott completed fewer than half of his pass attempts.

Bryan Walker was no better, completing only one of six throws -- a 22-yard strike to Chris Mizell -- and was picked off once. Bagnoli said that McDermott's oft-injured shoulder had nothing to do with his performance.

"He had a full practice week," Bagnoli said. "So we expected him to play better."

The only moments of levity for the Penn fans in attendance came courtesy of Harvard's kicking game.

On the Crimson's first extra-point attempt, holder Robert Balkema fumbled the snap, leading to a pass which was intercepted in the end zone. Its second extra-point attempt met the same fate after Murphy called for a fake.

Harvard's third drive brought the offense within field-goal range, but Penn's J.J. Stanton blocked the kick and teammate Michael Johns recovered the fumble. It was Crimson kicker's Matt Schindel's first miss of the season.

Johns later blocked the Crimson's third extra-point attempt. After Harvard's fourth touchdown, Murphy decided to go for a two-point conversion, and O'Hagan scored after calling his own number.

Schindel finally put a ball between the uprights on his sixth attempt -- a 28-yard field goal which ended the scoring for the day.

"It's not Schindel's fault," Murphy said of his team's kicking follies. He added that injuries have forced him to put a freshman in at long snapper so the kicking unit has not had too much experience working together.

By the end of the day, though, Murphy could look past all that. His team remains in the Ivy League title race as the final week looms and can earn a share of the title with a win at eternal rival Yale and a Brown loss at Columbia.

Penn, on the other hand, has no such luxury.

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