One game away

The Penn-Princeton gridiron rivalry is beginning to look a little one-sided.

In the teams’ 101st matchup, the Quakers dominated from beginning to end, jumping out to a 21-0 lead and cruising to a 42-7 trouncing. The win marked the third largest margin of victory for the Quakers over the Tigers, and the biggest since 1943.

The Red and Blue played one of their best contests of the year in front of a Homecoming crowd of 14,027, scoring its most points since the 2007 finale against Cornell and giving up only 215 yards of total offense.

“I thought from top to bottom, all three facets, it was probably as complete a game as we’ve played all year,” coach Al Bagnoli said.

With the victory, the Quakers improve to 6-2 overall and remain undefeated in conference play at 5-0. The win sets up a showdown with Harvard — also unbeaten in League play — in Boston Saturday for the Ivy championship.

And the Quakers showed that they are more of a multi-dimensional team than has been displayed thus far this season. They have the No. 1 rushing defense, No. 1 scoring defense and No. 2 total defense in the Football Championship Subdivision, but showed Saturday they have an offense to supplement it.

Kyle Olson followed up a career performance last week against Brown with another stellar game. He completed 20-of-32 passes for 238 yards to nine different receivers (including himself) and a career-high three touchdowns with no interceptions — a big improvement over last week’s four.

“Last week I was a little aggressive in the second half, I was trying to do too much,” he said. “I really just tried to focus this week on playing in my element and doing what I can … I tried to make it a statement this week to take what they give us.”

The game started out firmly in his hands, as he completed passes of 21 and 29 yards on Penn’s opening drive. That set up fullback Luke DeLuca’s one-yard touchdown plunge. He would tack on another one in the second quarter, to bring his team-high touchdown total to seven on the year.

And plenty of other running backs got into the mix too, with Lyle Marsh leading the way. The freshman totaled 99 yards on 12 carries, good for an 8.2 yards per carry average.

The Princeton rushing attack was much less effective, netting only 25 yards on 18 carries. In fact, the team was outgained on the ground by three individual Quakers running backs, including freshman Jeff Jack, who didn’t even enter the game until Bagnoli brought in his second-stringers late in the fourth quarter.

And the Tigers’ passing game did not fare much better. Sophomore Tommy Wornham threw for 181 yards, including a 44-yard toss to wide receiver Trey Peacock that set up Princeton’s only score. Nearly all of his other 17 completions, however, were quick hits and checkdowns.

His day ended after Penn cornerback Chris Wynn caught an errant pass and returned it 59 yards for his first career defensive touchdown, giving the Quakers a 42-7 lead.

“The quarterback’s ball just sailed on him, and it fell right in my lap,” Wynn said. “It’s kind of a monkey off my back in terms of scoring a defensive touchdown.”

The dominant performance played out in front of the largest and loudest Penn fan contingency of the year. The players cited the electric crowd as a motivator for their success.

“It feels great seeing a lot of fans out in the stands,” Olson said. “It was really an awesome sight to see all that toast coming down in the third quarter. It was the most toast I’ve ever seen in one sitting.”

So the entire season comes down to next week’s showdown with Harvard. But after putting up their most dominant performance of the year, the Quakers will be riding a high all the way to Boston.

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