Football | Offense finds no legs to stand on

BOSTON, Nov. 10 - The game wasn't lost when Penn gave up a 20-yard touchdown pass to Corey Mazza at the end of the first half. It wasn't lost when the Crimson scored 10 points in four minutes to open the third quarter.

No, the deciding play in Penn's 23-7 loss at Harvard Stadium on Saturday took place on the first snap.

Quakers running back Joe Sandberg, already suffering through an injury-plagued season, tweaked his knee on the first play from scrimmage and was forced to leave the game. He would return later in the quarter, but was eventually pulled for good.

A leg injury to fullback Nick Cisler made matters even worse for Penn, which would play three-plus quarters without its regular backfield.

"We've been a very, very unlucky team," said coach Al Bagnoli, who has also seen Robert Irvin, his Week 1 quarterback, go down for the season. "Catching some bad breaks and playing against a good team - so, bad combination."

For the first 28 minutes, however, Penn was very much in the game.

Keeping itself afloat in a scoreless tie, the Penn defense was playing smashmouth football and had barely given an inch. The front seven had held the Crimson to just seven rushing yards, and the secondary was just as strong, yielding only 39 yards through the air.

Then Cheng Ho happened.

Starting at its own 12 and with 2:13 on the clock, Harvard went to Ho, its starting tailback, on the first play. He broke off a 37-yard run, and the Crimson didn't stop.

They picked up three more first downs and went 52 yards through the air. It all culminated with Mazza's touchdown catch, which put him at the top of Harvard's career touchdown reception list.

"I think constantly we were caught out of position," Penn linebacker Joe Anastasio said of Harvard's drive to end the half. "It seemed like [whenever] we got them in a third down situation, they were able to convert. I think it gave them a little momentum going into half."

The Crimson came out strong after the break, riding quarterback Chris Pizzotti's hot hand to a five-play, 62-yard drive.

Harvard would recover a fumble by third-string running back Bradford Blackmon on the very next play, allowing kicker Patrick Long to nail a 30-yard field goal two minutes and 16 yards later.

Penn was able to muster an 80-yard scoring drive in the second half that ended in a touchdown run by freshman Michael DiMaggio, who showed some flashes of promise as the primary running back.

But ultimately, the contest was dictated by the Quakers' offensive struggles. Quarterback Bryan Walker threw for just 85 yards on 10-of-27 passing, and backup and platoon-mate Brendan McNally was 4-8 for 40 yards and an interception.

And that wasn't helped by the fact that they didn't have Sandberg to lean on.

"Once we lost Joe we kind of got put into bad scenarios where we couldn't run the ball as effectively as we wanted to," Bagnoli said. "We had some breakdowns, some assignment errors. . That's not a great recipe."

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