Prowling for a spoiler

The Ivy League football title will be decided on another day.

For now, the Quakers must focus on beating an old rival looking to play spoiler on Homecoming.

The stakes will be high when Penn (5-2, 4-0 Ivy) squares off with Princeton (2-5, 1-3) in the teams’ 101st all-time meeting tomorrow at Franklin Field at 3:30 p.m. With Harvard playing Columbia in New York at 12:30, the Quakers will look to keep pace with the also-unbeaten Crimson to set up a showdown for the Ivy championship Nov. 14 in Boston.

Red and Blue tri-captain Jake Lewko — a veteran of many intense Ivy battles — insisted that when a rivalry is as fierce as Penn-Princeton, it’s nearly impossible for the team to worry about any other game on its schedule.

“It’s always a dogfight,” Lewko said. “Everyone’s scratching and clawing for every inch when you’re on the field. It’s just tradition — that’s what it comes down to.”

The senior linebacker has stressed that point to his teammates, as has coach Al Bagnoli.

“This is Stanford-Cal, this is Alabama-Auburn, this is Michigan-Ohio State — This is our version of it,” Bagnoli said. “So throw out the records, throw out the comparative scores, throw out all that stuff, because it doesn’t matter in this one.”

On paper, the Quakers have a significant advantage over the Tigers. Penn’s top-ranked Ivy defense — which hasn’t allowed a single point in over 10 quarters — will be going up against the Ivy’s worst scoring offense. The Tigers haven’t fared much better on the other side of the ball, allowing almost 28 points per game, placing them seventh in the Ancient Eight.

But, as Bagnoli said, none of these statistics will matter come tomorrow. Rivalry games are almost always tight no matter the circumstances and this rivalry is no exception: The two teams have been separated by a combined 13 points during their last three meetings, the past two of which were won by the Quakers.

“[Princeton] is a team that historically we’ve fought very hard to compete against,” said Bagnoli, who enters the game 12-5 in his career against the Tigers. “It’s been low-scoring; it’s been 60 minutes of action. I expect no less [tomorrow], and our kids should expect no less.”

Needless to say, with Princeton coming off its first Ivy Win of 2009 against Cornell, Bagnoli isn’t taking his opponent lightly.

With dynamic sophomore quarterback Tommy Wornham, who leads the team in passing and rushing, accounting for exactly 75 percent of the Tigers’ offense, “they’ve moved the ball against virtually everybody,” Bagnoli said.

“They do a real good job with the option game,” he explained. “They spread you out and create a lot of creases, and they do a nice job of play-action pass off of all the run looks.”

Though the “Princeton offense” is more associated with basketball, Lewko described the football version as “really complex,” comparing it to the Villanova offense that has given the Penn defense trouble.

“They have a couple … little curveballs in there that are slightly different,” Lewko said. “It’s a tricky little gameplan we’re trying to get used to right now.”

If the Quakers make the necessary adjustments, they will be one step closer to their first Ivy championship since 2003. This squad was in a similar position heading into last year’s Princeton matchup, but followed up a 7-0 victory with a crushing loss to Harvard that ended any chance at a share of the league title.

This season, with an unblemished Ivy mark in tow, Bagnoli’s bunch controls its own destiny. A coach that has been around for six of the program’s 13 league titles understands the importance of that.

“We work all year long to put ourselves in this position,” Bagnoli said, “and now you’ve got to be able to capitalize.”

Lewko has suffered this disappointment during his four-year career.

“It’s been such a letdown fighting for a tie or fighting for second place [the last three years],” Lewko said. “Now, it’s just an amazing feeling to actually be in the game, be in front of the race, and just be running the show.”

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