I couldn’t have done any better with last week's predictions if I had a crystal ball. Scott Lopano was very “up,” earning Ivy Special Teams Player of the Week honors. Ryan Mitchell was also “up,” leading the Quakers in receiving. And Penn’s pass protection was indeed “down” all afternoon long. So who’s up and down this week?
Three Up —
Billy Ragone: Because he’s gotten better every game so far this season. Granted, he started out at the lowest of lows at Lafayette, but he hasn’t thrown a pick since then and is increasingly incorporating lesser-targeted receivers such as Mitch King and Ryan Allen into the passing game as teams start to blanket Conner Scott. Fourth-quarter comebacks do wonders for a quarterback’s confidence regardless of what happened in the previous three quarters. Ragone is a quarterback with momentum going up against the Ivy League’s worst scoring defense.
Conner Scott: Speaking of Scott, it doesn’t matter whether Yale decides to double him or not. They won’t be able to stifle him as much as Columbia did last week when the Lions held him to just 17 yards receiving on two catches. Ragone isn’t going to be going up against a defensive front as underrated and stout as Columbia’s was, so he should have more time to find Scott downfield. Scott has already established himself as the kind of player who just doesn’t have two quiet games in a row.
The hurry-up offense: Fellow football columnist John Phillips accurately pointed out this week how much more comfortable Ragone and the rest of the offense looked in the hurry-up. Al Bagnoli echoed many Quakers’ fans when he wondered aloud after the game why he didn’t go to the hurry-up sooner. Bank on Bagnoli trying to tune up the uptempo stuff against a team that shouldn’t be able to handle much of it.
Three Down —
Kickoff coverage: One good thing the Bulldogs have going from them is tailback Tyler Varga, who leads the Ancient Eight not only in all purpose yards but also in kick return average. Penn comes in ranked just sixth in the conference in kickoff coverage. Special teams supremacy may be one of the Bulldogs’ greatest hopes for victory tomorrow, especially since their defensive woes may result in a lot of kickoffs from Penn.
Defensive front: Columbia ranks sixth among Ivies in rushing offense and still gouged Penn on the ground last week for 196 yards. Warning: Yale has a far better rushing ‘O’ than the Lions. The Bulldogs rank second in rushing and third in total offense among Ivies. So you can bet on Yale trying to stick it to Yale in the running game. If the Bulldogs are patient, they may just be able to wear down Penn’s defense up front like Columbia did.
Cameron Countryman: Countryman looked out of his element as he stepped up to help replace Joe Holder in the slot, dropping a crucial catch on the Quakers’ final drive and showing his youth throughout the game. You’d expect Bagnoli to rely more on Lyle Marsh in the slot than either Countryman or Eric Fiore going forward based on all three players’ performances at the position so far.
Last week I talked to New York Times sportswriter and Penn alum Alan Schwarz (C’ 90) about how he helped save the toast toss at Penn. In 1988, Schwarz and three of his friends smuggled 3,000 slices of toast into Franklin Field for a September football game. A column written by Schwarz ran in The Daily Pennsylvanian on the Thursday before the game encouraging students to join them in their smuggling spree. According to Schwarz, Penn Athletics not only didn’t provide toast for students but security guards confiscated any toast that students brought on their own.
Fortunately there’s plenty of fascinating excerpts left over from our conversation for this week’s edition of Penn Sports Plus.
On Penn Athletics’ policy on the toast toss in 1988:
They told us it was a health hazard and it was not safe. It would be disingenuous to say that throwing toast is not at its very core littering. Of course it is. I think the burden of proof is on the student to justify said littering. I believe that that can be very easily done, but it’s not unreasonable for the athletic department to begin from the default setting that throwing things in the stands, up to and including food items, is not preferable. In this case, it is. But it was clearly not only benign but important to the community. So the benefits outweighed the costs.
On the state of Penn Athletics at the time:
The athletic department at that time was in the midst of transforming from a less formal, more traditional athletic structure to more of a kind of corporate, streamlined, modern image operation. And they underestimated how much their students wanted to keep this silly little thing alive. And clearly it would have disappeared had we not done what we did. I think they bought the toast Zamboni as a form of acquiescence. I may be incorrect about that, but I seem to recall the first Zamboni making an appearance late in my college career. ‘We’re not gonna stop it, so we might as well just embrace it.’ Had they had their way, there would have been no toast to throw. We made it so that they just couldn’t do anything about it.
On Penn Athletics’s response to the column:
I just vaguely recall their general reaction towards me being, 'What an asshole.' Kind of like, 'How dare you tell us how to run our stadium operation.' [But] we were not on the brink of civil war. I think that they were doing something foolish, I wrote something that got some people riled up. [But] we did not storm the Bastille. But it was more important that we smuggled the toast into the stadium than rile people up. Maybe I’m underestimating the power of the written word but I think it’s more powerful to hand out toast at the end of the third quarter.
Schwarz wrote in his column back in ’88 that “a lot of the majesty has left [Franklin Field and the Palestra’s] hallowed halls.” On the national prominence of Franklin Field 24 years later…
I don’t think much has changed a whole lot in terms of its majesty. The last important non-Ivy League game at Franklin Field probably took place in 1956. That’s when Notre Dame played there and Penn was tied 14-14 at the half because Notre Dame had a contract with Penn that extended past the Ivy agreement in 1954. That was it. After Penn won the Ivy League title in 1959, that was it in terms of national importance. And that’s fine. Things change.
On his career as writer for Baseball America and subsequent move into concussion-related writing credited with opening up the national dialogue about concussions in sports:
The first 15 years had been baseball exclusively. But then the football concussion thing fell in my lap. That got a lot of attention and they hired me to follow that and pursue that in early 2007. I was on the concussion story for four and a half years, which included the Owen Thomas story. I was really focused on head injuries and concussions for four and a half years and frankly, I got tired of it. Also because of the way things evolved I became part of the story. And I felt uncomfortable with that. I understood why it happened, but it’s not something I wanted to continue. So I just quit cold turkey. I knew if I stayed in sports, every dead football player was going to wind up on my table. And I didn’t want to do that for a living anymore. The Times is incredibly supportive when you want to change departments and they let me do it. The support I’ve received from them has been flabbergasting.
On what kind of taste concussion work left in his mouth — how much was pride in the progress he was a part of and how much was extreme unpleasantness?
Far more of the former. I think we are raised as journalists to not think of ourselves as part of the story. We cover the news, we don’t make the news. Now in some respects, I made the news for a while. The work that we did a lot of people a lot of good but it’s still a concept I have a hard time assimilating. I don’t know why, it sounds weird, it will sound even weirder if you quote me, but I tried to just sort of leave it behind. It was extraordinarily unpleasant to deal with not only the parents of dead children but also the NFL for a number of years. But you do what you have to do, and I did what I had to do, and now I’m trying to do something else. The passion that the job requires makes it very difficult to acknowledge one’s own accomplishments. That instinct is dulled within us for good reason.
On whether the toast-smuggling was about sending a message to Penn Athletics or joking around:
It was both. We knew it was all very silly. But it was on the very serious side of silly. It was on the very serious side of the silly spectrum. Sometimes silly is very important. We were not planning a bus boycott of Montgomery — it was all just so dumb and so easily fixed. It was nothing that a big toaster and 100 loaves of bread couldn’t fix.
Penn Football shuts out Princeton, 7-0October 17, 1936
60 years after their first meeting, Penn shut out Princeton in a one-touchdown matchup.
This solo touchdown was achieved on a 57-yard punt return by team captain Lew Elverson, a member of the mid to late-1930's single-wing "Destiny Backfield."
The night before the game, there was a rally in the Quad, where the players pumped up the huge crowd that had gathered, according to E. Craig Sweeten (W'37) in a Penn Gazette interview.
Many years later the football alums from the class of 1937 presented the game ball, which read the final game score, in addition to other game and team memorabilia for a display on the fifth floor of Van Pelt.
Though Princeton was held scoreless in this mid-October matchup, the Tigers came close to catching the Quakers on multiple occasions.
The Tigers made it across the Quakers' 10-yard line five times in the game, at one point coming within two yards of the end zone. But the defense held their own.
Coach Harvey Harman said it was the team's "guts" that lead to the win, according to letsgoquakers.com.
The same year, this squad took down powerhouses such as Michigan.
Harman left Penn with the class of 1937 the following year, heading over to Rutgers. He was replaced by coach George Munger.
In the 1936 season, the Red and Blue only gave up more than seven points once, going 7-1 that season. It would take a few rebuilding years to get back to such a record.
In this week’s Mano-A-Mano, football writer John Phillips and Associate Sports Editor Mike Tony debate the state of the Quakers’ offense.
John Phillips: It’s one thing to have an off week, where a team comes out flat in the first half. But as Billy Ragone said after the game on Saturday, the team hasn’t put together a full game, two solid halves, yet.
A comeback is great, but really, they were two yards away from losing a game on Saturday that — if this team hopes to compete with Harvard and Cornell — they should have dominated. Slow starts are less of a worry than an inability to play a cohesive, clean 60 minutes, which is what this team has shown.
Mike Tony: It’s true that Penn’s offense has yet to play a complete game, but I’ll take at least one guaranteed interval of dominance when it counts against a solid (not to mention scholarship) William & Mary defense and a Columbia ‘D’ that came in ranked No. 7 in the FCS in sacks per game.
The Quakers had to adjust to the loss of Joe Holder and overcome a practice week in which an unusually high number of players were kept from contact preparation.
Against a vastly underrated Lions’ defense and with their own defense reduced to a turnstile, Ragone impressed with yet another fourth-quarter comeback. It’s comforting to know he can flip the switch when he needs to. Ragone hasn’t thrown a pick since the opener and he’s utilizing more of his weapons each game. This offense is on the rise even factoring in all those sluggish starts.
JP: To win the Ivy and beat Harvard — who has been demolishing its opponents — one half isn’t going to cut it. If Penn plays an identical first half against Harvard or Cornell, the deficit will be much larger than three points. After this week, we know the defense can’t be relied upon.
Bagnoli knew going into the week he would have to prepare with who he had available, and his original game plan clearly didn’t work.
Putting Lyle Marsh into Holder’s role when Cameron Countryman wasn’t getting the job done and hurrying up the offense worked very well. But it shouldn’t take until you’re down 10 points with 10 minutes to go in the fourth to make those adjustments. When it takes that long for your coach to make the right adjustments, the team’s going to follow suit.
MT: The Quakers only had one complete game at this point of their 2010 Ivy Championship season, and that was against a Bucknell squad far weaker defensively than any of the Penn’s opponents in 2012. Complete games are hard to come by regardless of coaching preparation. Ragone has gone to Marsh through the air earlier in games this season, and he spread the wealth to lesser-targeted receivers like Mitch King and Ryan Allen under constant pressure.
The ‘O’ has momentum in spite of its injuries and schedule at this point. That’s really all you can ask for.
JP: A complete game doesn’t mean a perfect game — it just comes down to effort. For the first half, the team didn’t have that spark, that energy that’s needed to stay competitive. This team, with its inconsistent effort, could come out flat and lose to Yale, but very easily get riled up to play Harvard, keep it close and maybe even win. It’s not a question of personnel. It’s about the soul of this squad, and so far, every result points to a difficulty maintaining energy on offense.
MT: I’ve seen enough Penn football over the years not to question the Quakers’ effort. Channeling that effort effectively is another matter. The ‘O’ has shown enough resiliency under the gun in both Ivy games to convince me that that side of the ball, soul included, is on the right track. Potency is more essential than consistency at this point of the season, but that will change soon. Given Yale’s recent struggles, New Haven is the perfect place for the complete game we’ve all been waiting for.
Verdict? This week against Columbia should’ve marked Penn’s first complete game. But as John described, Bagnoli didn’t make the necessary adjustments in time for that to happen. J-Phil wins — the offense has to get it together, and fast.
THE GOOD:The game-winning Drive. Down 20-17 with 2:26 remaining, the Quakers started their drive at their own 38. Just when the Red and Blue needed Billy Ragone to put things together, he found the accuracy that he had been missing for much of the day, completing 5 of 7 passes to lead Penn down the field to score the game-winning touchdown. Lyle Marsh caught 6 of his 7 passes out of the backfield on the drive, including a 41-yarder that took the Quakers over midfield, to the Columbia 18. Ultimately, it was the Ragone-Marsh connection that would end the drive. With the original play broken, and Ragone rolling to his left, Marsh slipped behind the defense to the back corner, where Ragone found him for the score.
THE BAD:The run defense. Penn didn’t have an answer to Columbia’s rushing attack. The Quakers allowed 207 yards on the ground on 37 attempts for an average of over 5.5 yards per carry. For the most part, the Quakers were getting to the runner but were unable to bring him down on that first contact. Columbia's lead rusher, Marcorus Garrett, rushed the ball 19 times for 128 yards, with 31 of them coming on…
THE UGLY:Garrett’s 2nd TD Run. Had the Quakers suddenly been playing two hand touch, this run still would’ve been a touchdown. Garrett took the ball, found a hole to the right side, and saw only green grass in front of him. No defender came within two yards of him until he was within five yards of the end zone. While captain Brandon Copeland said that fatigue had nothing to do with the defense’s performance, this was one play where the Quakers seemed to be caught catching their breath.
Not that the Penn-Princeton rivalry has been lacking in intensity, but this year’s women’s soccer tilt between the two schools appears like it will carry extra weight.
Penn and Princeton currently sit atop the Ivy standings at 3-0. If both teams maintain their level of play and win out, when they meet in the season finale on Nov. 3 at Princeton, it will effectively become an Ivy League championship game. Considering that last season’s 14-2-1 Penn team missed out on an at-large bid, winning the conference could be their only ticket to the NCAA tournament.
The Quakers have a relatively easy path to the finale with games remaining against Brown and Yale — both which are winless in Ivy play. The only potential roadblock is this weekend’s game at Dartmouth (see preview). But with wins at Ithaca and as far away as Sacramento, the Quakers have proved thus far that they can travel well.
A potential Penn-Princeton game provides an extremely intriguing matchup on paper. Princeton has the strongest offense in the conference, led by forward Jen Hoy’s 14 goals. Penn, meanwhile, boasts the league’s stoutest defense, conceding only 0.81 goals per game. One huge advantage in the Tigers favor will be home field. The Quakers have not won there since 2003.
With all the potential storylines surrounding a Penn-Princeton finale, we can only hope the two teams keep up their outstanding play.
Last week’s predictions were hit and miss. We definitely got a heavy dose of short passes last week, but we did not see as much from Andrew Holland as expected. No QBs in this week’s list though:
Three Up-
Scott Lopano: This one’s more of a no-brainer than you might think. Lopano ranks seventh in the nation in punting average with 43.9 yards per punt this year, including two over 50 yards. He has pinned eight of his 18 punts inside the 20-yard line. If Lopano is able to routinely pin Columbia’s anemic offense deep in its own territory, it could be lights out for the Lions pretty quickly.
Ryan Mitchell: With Joe Holder out for the year and Conner Scott routinely drawing double coverages, look for Mitchell to get more touches in the passing game. Mitchell currently ranks fourth on the team in receiving yards and is tied for fourth in receptions with Holder. Columbia ranks sixth in passing defense and seventh in passing defense efficiency, so you’d expect Mitchell to take on a more prominent role against the Lions this week.
Sebastian Jaskowski: Jaskowski leads all Ivy defensive backs in tackles and ranks sixth in tackles overall. He’s been a steady hand in what has often been a shaky secondary this season, and it’s hard to imagine him getting burned much by the worst passing offense in the conference.
Three Down-
Pass protection: The Lions have three players with at least two sacks this year, led by 2010 and 2011 All-Ivy senior defensive end Josh Martin. Columbia ranks third in the Ivy League in sacks, and Penn allowed four sacks last week to William & Mary. One of the few feasible ways Columbia can pull off the upset is to get consistent pressure from up front on Ragone and benefit from resulting turnovers.
Lyle Marsh as a receiver: Offensive coordinator Jon McLaughlin told me this week that he wants to see more downfield success in the passing game in addition to the high-percentage throws Ragone seems most comfortable throwing. This game is the perfect opportunity to hook up with receivers who can extend the field like Conner Scott, but it might mean less touches for Marsh as a receiver. William & Mary blitzed often last week, making Marsh a great safety valve for Ragone to throw to. (Marsh had eight receptions for 47 yards.) But seven of Columbia’s 11 sacks this season have come from the defensive line, suggesting that the Lions may not have to blitz so much to get pressure. With Penn potentially looking downfield more and Columbia not likely to sell out with the blitz, Marsh’s value as a receiver diminishes.
Kick returners: Dan Wilk and Dexter Davis may not get a lot of kickoffs to return because the odds are that the Lions won’t be scoring very much. In this case, kick returners being down means the rest of the team is up.
On the same day Penn basketball announced its captains (Miles Cartwright, Fran Dougherty and Dau Jok), FOX Sports's Josh Gershon is reporting that the men's basketball team picked up its first commit of the 2013 class in center Dave Winfield II.
The 6-foot-9, 260-pound center from southern California is a student at Harvard-Westlake in North Hollywood. His father, Dave Winfield, is a hall-of-fame baseball outfielder who played in the MLB for 23 seasons. He went to the All-Stars 12 straight times from 1977-1988 as a San Diego Padre and New York Yankee.
Penn football enters its Ivy home opener against Columbia coming off a tough weekend during which it fell, 34-28, to William & Mary (see story) and also likely lost fifth-year senior WR Joe Holder for the season to a broken fibula. This week, I sat down with football beat writer Anna Strong and Associate Sports Editor Allison Bart to discuss if it's worth it for the Quakers to play such a tough non-league schedule:
Women’s soccer freshman midfielder Erin Mikolai has made an instant impact in her first year, earning Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors twice and currently ranking second on the teams in points. After practice last week, Mikolai met with me at Penn Park for a 30-second review of her life as a freshman athlete and much more.
Favorite celebrity?
Chris Brown. Just because he’s so good looking. He’s a really good singer too.
Favorite soccer player?
[Lionel] Messi. His craftwork on the ball is just tremendous and his work off the ball is ridiculous.
Worst freshman moment?
Consequences if you do something wrong. We have to run, we have to carry all the balls, freshman stuff.
Best singer on the team?
[Junior] Laura Oliver. Amazing.
Worst singer on the team?
[Freshman] Shannon [Hennessy].
Weirdest thing about Penn?
The sculptures around campus. Like the Button! I don’t get it.
Penn Football comes back to defeat Brown, 38-17October 10, 1987
Oct. 10: Penn 38, Brown 17
It was 1987 and the Penn football team reigned as defending Ivy League champions since 1982.
But a solid Brown team was coming to the Frank with the hopes of taking the title away from the Quakers.
And for a while, it looked like Brown would.
The Quakers came into the game 1-1 in the League, while the Brown Bruins (now Bears) were 2-0.
The game began with a Brown rally starting with a touchdown on a 17-yard pass from Mark Donovan to Jamie Simone. It was followed by another touchdown on a run by Donovan, who followed by waving the ball in the faces of the Quakers on the field.
The Bruins held a 14-0 lead at the end of the first quarter.
The second quarter started with a 39-yard field goal to put them up, 17-0.
It looked like Brown would finish what it came to do. But the former champs wouldn’t take it.
The first Penn points of the game came on a 28-yard field goal, which was followed by a 7-yard run for a touchdown by Chris Flynn and a 40-yard field goal.
Working on a comeback, the Quakers were down, 17-13, by the end of the first half.
The Red and Blue exploded in the third quarter, scoring 11 points to take the lead, 24-17.
And they still weren’t done.
In the fourth quarter, sophomore running back Bryan Keys ran for a 68-yard touchdown to put the Quakers up, 31-17. Keys also got the final touchdown on a 1-yard plunge into the end zone.
“Some have said that ‘the king had died,’” Keys told The DP after the game. “The king is not dead — he’s coming back and we’re ready.”
Though Harvard won the League that year, Penn came out to prove its fire had not died that day. And the Quakers would be back the following year.
Niagara has hired 1978 Penn alumnus Tom Crowley to fill their open Athletic Director position.
Crowley played basketball for the Quakers from 1975-78 and was the captain of the 1978 Ivy League championship team. That year, he averaged 8.2 points per game while also leading the team in field goal percentage. The 1978 Quakers went 2-2 in Big 5 play and also won an NCAA Tournament game to make the Sweet 16 before falling to Duke.
The following year, Crowley started his rise up the ranks of college basketball coaches as an assistant coach for the Quakers’ 1979 run to the Final Four. From there, he went on to become an assistant coach at Xavier, Rutgers and Stanford before becoming a head coach at Division II St. Michael’s college.
Since the early 2000s, he has worked on the administrative side of athletics, working at Vermont, Temple and, most recently, Butler.
Sophomore hoops player Keelan Cairns has begun writing for a new blog, The Courtside Collective. It sounds like he seems to make this a recurring gig, and in his first post he recounts his freshman season.
The 6-foot-10 Ireland native had very limited time due to a back injury and said the following in the blog post:
My freshman year didn't go exactly as planned as I suffered an injury during the pre-season, which plagued me all year long and followed me into this year. I went through everything the doctors said without much success. So, this year I'm taking a more drastic approach and I am considering surgery to shave off the bulging disc in my back, releasing the trapped nerve inhibiting me.
We are not given access to the players for interviews until official practices begin next week, so that's all the information we have for now. Stay tuned for more information as soon as we have it.
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After practice last week,Wharton freshman and wide receiver Cameron Countryman sat down with me at Franklin Field for a 30-second review of his favorite movie, estimated number of trips to Wawa and more.
Favorite sport to watch other than football?
Basketball.
Favorite movie?
Taken
Thing you miss most about home?
The weather and In-N-Out.
Favorite pre-game meal?
In high school, it was Quiznos. Now, it’s whatever they feed us pretty much because it’s all good.
Dream job other than playing the NFL?
College coach or working with an NFL team, either financially, with management or something like that.
If you had to choose your concentration right now, what would it be?
Probably marketing.
Estimated number of trips to Wawa this year?
It’s only been a month, and I’ve probably gone 15 to 20 times.
This weekend’s 1-0 loss to Columbia notwithstanding, the disappointing start to the season for men’s soccer can be traced back to one number: 65.
Last year, in 14 games of action, then-freshman goalie Max Kurtzman made 41 saves out of 58 shots to tout a .707 save percentage. Recall, even with Kurtzman giving up only 1.17 goals per game, the Quakers still finished 6th in the Ivy race.
While much focus has been spent on the Quakers’ inability to put the ball into the net consistently, it has been their defense that has kept them from being able to work with a lead much at all this season.
Through eight games, Kurtzman has faced 65 save opportunities, making 46 of them. Kurtzman has allowed goals at essentially the same exact rate, .708, this season — but it's come in only the eight contests in which he's appeared — and his defense hasn’t provided much support.
At the beginning of the season, people questioned how this team would rebound following the losses of Jake Levin and Thomas Brandt, who served as the crux down the middle upon which the Quakers often stood on balls in the air, as well as on set pieces. The good news for the Quakers is they’ve only played two Ivy League contests, and they’ve been in both until the end. If the young defensive unit is able to gel, they have a chance to get back into the race.
After the first win of the season a week ago Saturday at Dartmouth, Penn football was unable to keep up the new trend, falling to the William & Mary Tribe, 34-28. A messy first half started and ultimately determined the game. The Quakers came within six points of the Tribe during a second-half run, but were never able to catch up. The Red and Blue are now 1-3 (1-0 Ivy) and heading back to their Ivy schedule, taking on Columbia next Saturday.
THE GOOD: The passing game (during Penn’s second-half attempted comeback). The turnaround in play showed some promise for the Ivy season. Though the fact that it took the Quakers that long to really get in the game calls for concern, Penn made some major shifts between the two halves — scoring 21 of their 28 points. There wasn’t as big of post-toast dispersal of fans after the third. The fourth quarter had something coming, and though it didn’t have the desired result, the Quakers demonstrated what they have the potential to accomplish. Penn got moving in the second half. Ragone threw for 193 yards in the second half — for a total 207 in the game — and the Quakers got 17 of their 24 first downs.
THE BAD: Non-conference play. The Quakers came within 6 points of avoiding a broken record. After Saturday’s loss, the Quakers have now lost three consecutive non-conference games. This is the first time that this has happened during Bagnoli’s career at Penn. This year especially, Penn had a tough time taking on the scholarship schools with losses to Villanova and Lafayette.
ALSO BAD: Wide receiver Joe Holder is out with a broken fibula, which occurred during the fourth quarter of the matchup.
THE UGLY: Fumbles — four to be exact. These fumbles determined the game. Yes, the Quakers had some great drives in the second half that made the game interesting once again, but with William & Mary’s continued presence on the field, Penn could never recover from the two lost fumbles in the third quarter. Both of these fumbles led to Tribe touchdowns. The Red and Blue lost my six and gave up 14 due to fumbles. These were mistakes the Quakers could not afford to make.
Update (Sun, Oct. 7, 10:20 PM): Holder told me it's actually his fibula that is broken, not the tibia. A broken tibia would mean no chance of a comeback, but a fibula break gives him a chance at a comeback. - Megan Soisson
Penn wide receiver Joe Holder broke his tibia in Saturday's 34-28 loss to William & Mary, and he's likely out for the season.
Early in the fourth quarter, quarterback Andrew Holland launched a pass intended for Holder, but the pass went wide and Holder went down on the play. He hobbled off the field and did not return to the game.
Al Bagnoli announced in the postgame press conference that he broke his ankle, but in fact Holder broke his tibia.
Holder stayed confident though, and tweeted this after the game:
Not giving hope up yet. Putting the Ocho System to the test. Give me 4 weeks. Love the game and my boys to much. #quakeshow
Once again we predict three players whose stock will rise and three players whose stock will fall over the course of Penn’s clash with the Tribe on Saturday:
Three Up —
Andrew Holland: Penn will fight hard to win Saturday, but this game is about staying healthy as much as it is getting a ‘W'. Thus you can expect to see a heavier dose of Holland under center than usual this week as coach Al Bagnoli has always been quick to point out the “bumps and bruises” Ragone endures due to his hybrid style. William & Mary safeties Ivan Tagoe and Brian Thompson each have two interceptions and the team has seven picks total in just five games this season, and no matter who the Penn QB is, the Tribe is going to force the Quakers to go deep. Enter Holland.
Dan Wilk: If only because he’s “up” every game. Last week he led the Quakers with eight tackles and registered a sack, one of only four Penn has notched all season. He also has one of only two Penn interceptions so far in 2012. Wilk is also the only defensive back with a sack and simply one of the few explanations in an otherwise weak secondary for Penn’s No. 1-ranked pass defense among Ivies. (Yes, it's true.) There’s no reason why Wilk’s solid play shouldn’t continue against William & Mary’s strained aerial attack.
The hitch route: Ragone picked apart Dartmouth last week with short hitch-and-out routes that built his confidence and allowed the Quakers to play ball control offense. Regardless of who winds up under center the most Saturday, utilizing weapons like Conner Scott, Ryan Mitchell and Ryan Allen in the high-percentage passing game will be imperative against the Tribe’s opportunistic secondary.
Three Down —
Billy Ragone: As mentioned above, Ragone needs his rest. He also doesn’t match up well with the Tribe’s secondary. Most importantly, it would be hard for Ragone to top last week’s efficiency-fest, especially given that he has always been very “up and down” to begin with.
The rest of the secondary: Dartmouth QB Alex Park completed 20-of-29 throws for 279 yards against this secondary in his third collegiate start. Villanova QB John Robertson completed 13-of-20 throws for 213 yards and a touchdown against this secondary in his third collegiate start. This secondary is hurting right now, and we’re not even in the Ivy stretch yet. There's no reason yet to think they'll do an about face soon.
Jeff Jack: Jack has had 32 carries to Lyle Marsh’s seven in Brandon Colavita’s absence against Dartmouth and Villanova. It doesn’t make sense that their touches should be so unbalanced, and Bagnoli promised Marsh will play “an extensive amount” on Saturday. “Extensive amount” of course meaning more than two carries, which was Marsh’s workload at Dartmouth. That means less carries for Jack, and if Jack is indeed Bagnoli’s No. 1 guy with Colavita out, it makes sense to rest him up a bit before the Ivy stretch commences anyway.
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