Football | Down and out

Penn coach Al Bagnoli said that sophomore quarterback Keiffer Garton ran the two-minute drill perfectly.

There was only one blemish - - and it couldn't have been more costly. After leading the Quakers 63 yards to the Harvard 12, Garton found himself trailing by three and well within field-goal range.

But with 20 seconds left, he tried to thread the needle to Marcus Lawrence - his second read -in the end zone. Instead, he found Harvard free safety Ryan Barnes, who hauled in his third interception of the day to complete the Crimson's 24-21 victory.

Entering the weekend in a three-way tie for first, the Quakers are now all-but eliminated in the Ivy hunt. Penn can still mathematically win a share of the crown, but it would take a win at Cornell plus home losses by Harvard and Brown next weekend.

Bagnoli, meanwhile, doesn't regret throwing deep in the waning seconds instead of playing for overtime.

"If I had to redo it, I would do it exactly the same way," Bagnoli said.

He was not influenced, he added, by the performance of kicker Andrew Samson, who earlier in the quarter shanked a 23-yard chip-shot from the left hashmark wide right.

That fatal miss came two plays after Garton thought he and wideout Kyle Derham hooked up in the end zone.

But the officials ruled that the ball hit the Franklin Field turf before Derham made the sliding grab.

"You can't do anything about it now," Bagnoli said. "From where I was standing, it looked like it was not even close to a trap."

"It looked good to me," added Garton, who took every snap under center. The depth chart's protestations not withstanding, senior signal caller Robert Irvin was nowhere to be seen.

Garton wound up with a bizarre stat line - two touchdowns and 174 yards on the ground, including Penn's longest play from scrimmage on the season; no scores and three interceptions through the air.

Then again, it was an odd day for numbers crunchers. Bagnoli could only shake his head, as his team controlled the ball for 40 minutes, moved the chains 27 times to Harvard's 12 and finished with 445 yards, 184 more than the Crimson.

Perhaps the tone was set early, when Penn's eight-minute, 58-yard opening drive ended with a turnover.

"We made them work awful hard for nothing," Harvard coach Tim Murphy said.

From the Harvard 22, Garton rolled right, waiting for Derham to gain a step on cornerback Derrick Barker. He lofted one into the single coverage, but Barker got a piece of it, and the ball popped into Barnes' arms.

"That's never happened before," Barnes said of his three picks. "Some of those were probably not necessarily great plays by me but just being in the right spot."

And so, despite the Quakers valiant comeback from down 17-0, when it looked like they would never put points on the board, and despite all the unique story lines of 2008, this one ended like so many others of recent years. It all came crashing down on a failed red-zone conversion, botched field goal and untimely giveaway.

"It was a great college football game," Murphy said. "We were very fortunate to finish it off."

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