Defenses dominate in Penn win
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
PHILADELPHIA – Penn football coach Al Bagnoli thought the offensive displays of his team and Princeton University set football back 20 years.
Roger Hughes thought it was worse than that.
“I think that game set offensive football back about 50 years,” said the Tigers head coach. “We didn’t execute.”
Offensive execution was at a minimum in a 7-0 win by Penn on Saturday at Franklin Field. The Tigers fell to 3-5 overall, 2-3 in the Ivy League with the defeat while Penn improved to 3-5, 2-3.
“I think our defense played the best they’ve played all year,” said PU running back Rob Toresco. “They were pretty much shut down. You ask them to hold Penn to seven points, you expect the offense to score some points. Hats off to our defense. They gave us plenty of opportunities, plenty of great field position to do something with. We just did not do anything.”
The closest the Tigers came was when Toresco took a pass down the middle from Greg Mroz on the Tigers’ first possession of the second quarter and rambled 66 yards before he was chased down by Chris Wynn at the Penn 4-yard line. After two unsuccessful runs, Mroz’s pass to Toresco was intercepted by Britton Ertman in the end zone.
“Robbie was open in the flat,” Hughes said. “The ball got tipped and the Penn kid made a recovery. It got tipped and it was just enough for a Penn player to make an interception.”
To make matters worse, Mroz suffered a concussion tackling Ertman on the return. Mroz did not return. He was joined on the bench by receivers Will Thanheiser and Brendan Circle, also injured early in the game.
“The loss of Greg and Brendan Circle and Will Thanheiser, all within the same 10 plays, (meant) we were playing Trey Peacock and Matt Ranson at receiver pretty much the whole second half,” Hughes said. “I think they’re going to be very good players, but Adam Berry was giving a tutorial every play as to what everyone was going to do. The combination of those losses certainly made us different.
“Will and Greg both have concussions. Circ’ had a hip pointer. He tried to go at halftime and loosen up with it and he just couldn’t be effective with it.”
Take away the big gain and the numbers were not pretty. Princeton had just 99 yards of offense, two-thirds of it coming on the big pass to Toresco. At halftime, Princeton had just four first downs. Penn only had seven and fewer yards of total offense with 82. Princeton sacked Penn quarterback Bryan Walker three times and had nine tackles for losses.
“Overall, we did play pretty strong,” said PU linebacker Tim Boardman, who finished with 12 tackles, second only to Collin McCarthy’s 14 for the Tigers. “The exception was we couldn’t stop the screen play. That hurt us huge on second- and third-and-long We have to get off the field and let the offense get on there and try to score.”
The Tigers offense never got closer than the Penn 29 after the interception return. Princeton’s defense, however, yielded little as well. Joe Sandberg scored on a 26-yard run as the Quakers put together a 60-yard drive to open the second half. Penn never got closer than the Princeton 49 the rest of the game, even after recovering an onside kick following its touchdown.
“Defensively, we defended some bad field position,” Hughes said. “I was proud of our defense for that. But at times, we need to tackle a lot better. Our special teams, especially our kickoff and kickoff return team continue to hurt us a little bit. We have to get those things straightened out.”
Princeton will host Yale 1 p.m. Saturday in its final home game of the 2007 season. The Tigers defeated the Bulldogs last year to earn a share of the Ivy League title with them.
“We’ll be up for them,” Boardman said. “It’s Homecoming. It’s Yale and we have a strong rivalry with them. They’re coming for some revenge after we beat them last year. It’ll be Senior Day for Robbie and I. There will be a lot of emotion and passion.”
Emotions were mixed between anger and frustration after Saturday’s loss at Penn. Coming off the high of the Cornell win the week before, there was no indication of the flat performance ahead.
“We had fall break last week and we’d done what done the last two years during that time,” Hughes said. “I thought we had great practices. I thought our kids were pretty focused, but when we got on the field, we just didn’t execute.
“In offense, what happens if you get one person having a breakdown, you can take him out,” he added. “But it was a different person on various plays. Every time we got something going, we’d have a miscue. We had the quarterback get stepped on and fall down on third-and-8. If you could pinpoint one person, you replace him. It was a situation where we weren’t in sync offensively, we weren’t executing like we needed to.”
Bill Foran returned from missing the Cornell game to engineer the offense. He finished 13-for-27 for 91 yards. He was sacked three times. Toresco, Adam Berry and Jordan Culbreath had four catches apiece. Culbreath, the reigning Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week, was held in check with 20 yards on eight carries. Foran led the Tigers with 36 yards rushing on 13 carries. It was a difficult day to get anything going with the teams combining for 21 punts. They might have had 22, but Princeton succeeded in faking one on their first possession of the fourth quarter. Three plays later, however, Ryan Coyle was launching another punt into a frustrating afternoon sky.
“It’s not only frustrating for the coaching staff, but for the players, and for the program in general. One of the things we try to pride ourselves on is the consistency with which we play, the intensity and passion with which we play the game every week regardless of the situation. And we’re not. Clearly, we need to find that answer and find it quick.
“We have Yale coming in and they’re pretty good and then we go up to Dartmouth and they’re always tough up there. We have two left to win and we’re going out to practice and play like we’re going to win them.”