Two straight overtime games, two straight kicks shanked to the right and two straight Ivy League losses.
In the end, that was the fate of the Penn football team.
Following the three-point overtime loss to Yale last weekend, the Quakers' kicking game failed them again as they dropped a second consecutive Ivy League contest, this one to Brown, 30-27. The home loss puts Penn (4-3, 2-2 Ivy) at .500 in the Ivy League four games into the season for the first time since 1999.
The extra session started off well for Penn with a 10-yard pass to tight end Chris Mizell, but that was the last play the Homecoming crowd had to cheer about. The Quakers were stuffed on three consecutive downs, and kicker Derek Zoch pulled his 26-yard field goal wide right from the left hash mark.
Taking the ball second, Brown ran three conservative plays before attempting the 34-yard game-winning field goal into the swirling wind of the west end zone. Steve Morgan's kick sailed wide, seemingly forcing a second overtime - but Penn was offside. A few running plays later, Morgan's chip shot dealt the Quakers a fatal blow to their Ivy-championship hopes.
"Once again, the same things that have been plaguing us all season surfaced their heads again," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "We had chances to put the game away, and we didn't take advantage of it. We let the team hang and we let the team hang and we let the team hang, and that's what's going to happen."
The home side started slow as Brown methodically marched down the field with two 13-plus play drives to go up 10-0 on a nine-yard touchdown run.
But from there, the fortunes changed for Penn.
Adjusting to Brown constantly sticking eight men in the box, sophomore quarterback Robert Irvin and the Penn offense threw on all seven plays of their second possession, culminating in a touchdown pass to Billy May. But the six-yard slant only put the Quakers within four, since the line-drive extra point from Braden Lepisto - the backup kicker starting for Zoch - was blocked.
Later in the half, Penn erased the lead thanks to its opportunistic defense. While fighting off a block, senior linebacker Brian Fairbanks stripped DiGiacomo, and safety Scotty Williams scooped the ball up for a touchdown, taking a 13-10 lead into halftime.
"Every time we seemed to get some momentum going, 'bam,' they hit us with something," Brown coach Phil Estes said.
After trading early third-quarter touchdowns, special teams ironically provided Penn's biggest play of the game.
As the third quarter wound down, freshman Chris Wynn took the second kickoff of his career for a 98-yard touchdown before being met by a barrage of toast as he crossed into the end zone.
However, Brown wasn't the only team to blow a 10-point lead.
After a Brown field goal made it 27-20, each team made a gutsy call late that didn't pay off.
The Quakers stuffed the Bears on a fourth-and-inches back at their own 23, but Irvin floated an interception into the end zone on the very next play.
"It really was a busted play, and I should have just thrown it out, but I saw [receiver Matt] Carre in the back of the end zone a little too late, and I pressured it," Irvin said.
Fourteen plays and 80 yards later, Ivy League-leading receiver Lonnie Hill's acrobatic catch in the end zone tied the game, sending it into overtime.
The game meant something more for Hill, who had to deal with his mother passing away a week earlier.
"I was livid after [an earlier] drop because I told myself I was playing for her today," Hill said. "I wasn't going to make any mistakes after that."
The Quakers could have sealed a win on a number of plays, but the kicking - which left seven points on the board through kicks of 26 yards or closer - once again couldn't come through in the clutch.
"This isn't the NFL - I can't go to free agency and pick [a kicker] off the waiver wire," Bagnoli said. "So we'll have to keep working with the people we have, and hopefully they'll get better."
var uslide_show_id = "88c3bfba-81f1-41dc-97c1-ec90ce4496fd";var slideshowwidth = "468";var linktext = "";
