Scurria | Doling out the half-year hardware

Judging by the number of gray hairs Al Bagnoli must have sprouted after Saturday's painful-to-watch stalemate, you'd think the 2008 Ivy League football season was about to wrap up in advance of a long winter of R&R.;

Nope. It's only halftime for the year - five games down, five to go, and time to hand out the annual mid-season awards for both Penn and the conference:

Offensive player of the half-year

Penn: Hard to say, considering the Quakers have produced the second fewest first downs in the league but lead it in red zone offense. The most defensible answer may be sophomore tailback Mike DiMaggio, who has played beyond his years, but he hasn't been the No. 1 back in Penn's last two games - freshman Matt Hamscher has. So I'll go with Andrew Samson and his 8-for-9 performance on field goals, which is the best mark in the conference and easily makes him Penn's top scorer.

Ivy League: Tough choice between the quarterbacks of Brown and Harvard, who have each been putting up gaudy numbers. But Matt Dougherty's first-place Bears beat Chris Pizotti and Harvard heads up, so he gets the nod. Honorable mention: Bobby Sewall and Buddy Farnham, who will continue the tradtion of great Brown receivers who get only an obligatory glance from the NFL.

Defensive players of the half-year

Penn: The secondary. Chris Wynn, Tyson Maugle, Britton Ertman, Josh Powers and Jordan Manning lead a unit that is tops in the conference in pass defense and second in interceptions.

Ivy League: Bobby Abare. The Yale linebacker is third in the league with 48 tackles and is well clear of the field with 34 solo. Bonus points: his bro Larry has 39.

Trend of the half-year

Penn: Second-half mastery. Whatever Bagnoli is telling his defense during those 20 minutes of kicking for cheesesteaks, unfunny halftime shenanigans and bathroom stampedes, he should do it earlier. Penn has given up just 10 points in the third and fourth quarters this year. Honorable mention: Running-back-by-committee.

Ivy League: Parity. Teams that should be losing are winning and teams that should be winning are losing (Exhibits A and B: Harvard and Yale). Five years ago, this would have been bad news for Penn. Now .

Pleasant surprise of the half-year

Penn: Matt Hamscher. The freshman has proved to be a good compliment to Bradford Blackmon and Mike DiMaggio, and he may shake up the depth chart more as the season goes on.

Ivy League: Brown. After two years spent chasing the ghost of Nick Hartigan, Brown is finally emerging on its own. The only catch is that these are half-season awards. We'll see how good that win over Harvard looks a month from now.

Unpleasant surprise of the half-year

Penn: The passing game. It's hard to split the blame between the quarterbacks, the offensive line and the receiving corps, but it's fair to say that the unit has underperformed, especially in that horrendous second quarter against Columbia on Saturday.

Ivy League: A disappointment in the sad sense is Yale's Mike McLeod. The running back's once-Herculean performances are gone and might not come back. His coaches' incredulous comments notwithstanding, it appears that something is indeed wrong with the onetime savior of New Haven, and that Yale is indeed paying a price for it.

Andrew Scurria is a senior International Relations major from Wilmington, Del., and is former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is scurria@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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