Football: Three And Out

Al Bagnoli must be a masochist if he has any fondness left at all for overtime. If he does, he is doing a good job of concealing it.

Head bowed, the Penn coach walked into the postgame press conference after a 26-20 loss to Yale in three overtimes and began an eerily familiar refrain.

"Obviously, disappointed," he began. To his left, running back Joe Sandberg stared blankly ahead as if oblivious to his coach's words.

Sandberg, a fifth-year senior, may feel the sting more than anyone else. With his team down by six in the last overtime, it was he who took a pitch to the left side on fourth-and-goal from the 1. Out of room, he improvised, reversing direction and tossing the ball to a grateful Nick Cisler, the senior fullback. Sandberg sprinted to the sideline for an impromptu hug with offensive coordinator Bill Schmitz.

Then he turned around and crouched in disbelief. Ineligible man downfield. Five-yard penalty.

It was a controversial call, for sure - the kind you would expect an aggrieved coach to criticize. But after senior quarterback Bryan Walker's last-ditch pass trickled off the hands of senior wide receiver Braden Lepisto, cementing the win for Yale (6-0, 3-0 Ivy), it seemed like Penn's weary head coach couldn't muster the energy.

"I've got the worst seat in the house," he said. "I'm 80 yards away. I have to go back to the film, but it's no use right now. It's over. It doesn't matter at this point."

Then, he recounted the most painful blow of all.

"First-and-goal at the 2," he said. "We've got to find a way to put it in."

Penn's offense had been shaky throughout the game, but the Quakers (2-4, 1-2 Ivy) found a way to keep pace with their favored counterparts. Walker threw three interceptions, but gradually settled in as Bagnoli began to rely more heavily on Sandberg.

It was Sandberg who threw the nine-yard second-quarter touchdown - designed this time - to junior tight end Josh Koontz that injected belief into a team already sick of close losses.

In the end, it may have been the Sandberg-heavy approach that doomed the Quakers. At the end of regulation, they had the ball on their own 17-yard-line with 1:53 to play and all three timeouts.

But Bagnoli ran the clock out, handing the ball to Sandberg three times.

"It's tough down there against a pretty good defense," said Bagnoli, whose quarterback didn't complete a pass longer than 15 yards. "I don't think you want to be taking too many chances."

That decision nearly proved prophetic when Yale botched a snap on a must-make field goal in the second overtime. Senior kicker Alan Kimball was barely able to massage a wobbly kick through the uprights to tie the game.

And after Yale junior running back and likely Ivy League Player of the Year Mike McLeod pounded in another touchdown - again, barely - the Quakers got the ball in the third overtime, down 26-20. They drove it to right to the edge of the end zone.

First-and-goal at the 2.

Three Sandberg runs made little headway; on fourth down, the Yale defense held. On the fourth down that mattered, anyway.

"To do that on the [2-yard line] . on the last four plays is pretty amazing," Yale coach Jack Siedlecki said.

Siedlecki, on his way to a second straight league title at this point, said Yale and the other Ivies measure their success "by what Penn has done over the last 15 years."

Penn is no exception. The Class of 1993 was the last team not to win an Ivy title in its four years. Now, the Class of 2008 has done it.

Those 15 years of dominance are officially over.

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