Coming into Saturday's game against the Bulldogs, the bulk of the defensive preparation for coach Al Bagnoli's team no doubt centered around stopping Yale tailback Mike McLeod.
The junior had been torching the competition at a record-setting pace, rushing for 199 yards per game to lead the nation. Meanwhile, Penn's defense was coming off a Columbia game in which it conceded a meager eight yards on 25 carries.
One hundred forty-seven yards, three touchdowns and one bitter triple-overtime loss later, the Quakers can at least take solace in the fact that they did their job against the league's top rusher.
McLeod's glitzy final statistics do not tell the whole story of what ended up a very difficult day at the office. If not for a first-quarter outburst that included a 46-yard touchdown run - his other two didn't come until overtime - the back would have had a quiet day, indeed.
"We had our hands full trying to stop their running game, and I thought after the first quarter, we acquitted ourselves very well," Bagnoli said.
At the close of the first quarter, McLeod was already just three yards shy of the century mark with an average of 10.8 yards per carry. For the remainder of the game, including three overtimes, Penn held him to 50 yards on 26 carries, good for an average of 1.9.
In fact, exclude McLeod's first three rushes of eight, seven and 46 yards, and his seemingly productive day becomes a lackluster 86-yard performance with a 2.7 yards-per-carry average. Granted, he did find pay dirt two more times, but both of those came in overtime with the Elis starting at Penn's 25-yard line.
Yale coach Jack Siedlecki credited Penn's aggressive front seven with the mid-game turnaround.
"We had a couple of real nice runs early offensively and thought we were rolling, and then it just seemed like on every running play, there was one guy coming off," he said. "It was that one guy each play, or that one block that we needed that we didn't get. Their kids were . playing very, very tough on the line of scrimmage."
And while the defensive front deserves its due credit for continuing its solid play and shutting down McLeod - with the exception of his first three carries - Penn's secondary had a hand as well. The Quakers' top two tacklers on the day were corner Tyson Maugle and safety Pat Kimener, with 10 and eight, respectively.
Still, Kimener recognizes the job done by the big men up front.
"The front seven did a great job, and then from the secondary we were able to come in and make some good fills and do our job," he said. "But a lot of that is predicated on the front guys."
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