Champions

(More photos from the game) It may be anticlimactic.

But it is a second straight Ivy League title for the Penn football team.

About an hour after Penn's 37-7 Homecoming win over Princeton, Columbia wrapped up a 16-13 win over Harvard, while immediately before the Penn game finished, Yale lost to Brown. These upsets gave both the Crimson and the Elis two league losses while Penn (8-0, 5-0 Ivy) still remains undefeated with two games to play, ensuring it can finish no worse than tied with Yale or Harvard.

The drama of the scores coming in over the loudspeaker eclipsed that of the play on the field by a wide margin, as Penn exerted its dominance early and never let the Tigers into the game. Princeton lost four first half fumbles en route to falling behind 30-0 at the break.

"They're good," Princeton coach Roger Hughes said. "But we made them look a lot better."

Penn junior defensive end Michael Sangobowale recorded a sack of Princeton's Matt Verbit on the first play from scrimmage, leading to a Princeton three and out. Princeton failed to mount longer than a five play drive on any of its first half possessions.

Quakers' senior quarterback Mike Mitchell did not even need five plays to score. On the Penn's third offensive play, sophomore running back Sam Mathews took a handoff, and executed a perfect flea flicker with Mitchell, who found junior wideout Dan Castles for a 39 yard touchdown pass and a 7-0 lead. Mitchell would complete 25-of-37 attempts for 306 yards and two touchdowns.

"You just don't ever want to go into a game playing conservatively," Penn coach Al Bagnoli said. "We want to attack on every play. It was a great call by coach [Andy] Coen. And we had a lot more than that in [the gameplan] if we needed it."

Penn would not need it. The Quakers scored on six of seven first half possessions with senior Peter Veldman kicking three field goals of 24, 29 and 25 yards. Mathews ran for a score and Castles would catch another touchdown pass to complete the first half's scoring with 40 seconds to play.

Meanwhile Verbit struggled mightily in the first half, costing Princeton its lone scoring opportunity of the half with a fumble inside Penn's 30 in the first quarter. He also lost the ball on his own 30 in the second quarter.

"It had come up that he carries the ball a little loosely," Penn linebacker Steve Lhotak said.

The Tigers' performance hit rock bottom when two Princeton players failed to cover a squib kick by Veldman with two minutes to go in the second half and Penn up 23-0, allowing sophomore defensive back Doug Middleton to recover the kick. That would set up Castles' second score.

While Penn had blown big leads in its three-point wins over Brown and Yale the last two weeks, Princeton's own ineptitude ensured little chance of that happening.

"We felt we could come back," Verbit said. "But every time we got something going we'd fumble or get a penalty or something to shoot ourselves in the foot."

"We played, for the first time in a while, 60 minutes of what I consider to be efficient football," Bagnoli said.

Princeton would score a touchdown in the third to cut it to 30-7. However, the Quakers stayed aggressive, passing the ball on seven of 10 plays on its ensuing 75-yard touchdown drive. Mitchell hit Phillips three times for 43 yards of his nine-catch, 117-yard performance.

Princeton's next possession ended when a running play came up short on fourth-and-two, effectively ending the outside chance at a comeback.

The Quakers then just had to wait for other upsets to come in and give them their second straight Ivy League title. Penn plays Harvard and Cornell the next two weeks and, should it lose both, will likely have to share the title. However, Cornell is still winless in Ivy play and 1-7 on the season.

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