Wenik | The referees didn't help, but Penn football only has itself to blame

PRINCETON — With around five and a half minutes left to play in Penn football’s brawl with Princeton, wide receiver Spencer Kulcsar made a catch on a drag route, juked back and fell down at the first down marker, seemingly keeping a potential game-winning drive alive on fourth down and six.

Only the officials disagreed.

Kulcsar was marked just chain links shy of the Princeton 27, giving the Tigers a chance to run out the clock that they eagerly seized.

It was the last close call that went against Penn that afternoon in a 22-17 loss, but it was far from the first.

In a game where the Quakers were down to the very last reserves on their 62-man travel roster — there were at least eight stoppages for Penn injuries — the Red and Blue’s much-maligned secondary had its biggest plays of the year wiped away.

With the Quakers behind just 19-17 midway through the third quarter, Evan Jackson made a diving interception that would have given Penn the ball deep in Princeton territory. The referees ruled that the ball hit the ground for an incomplete pass, even though TV replays suggested otherwise.

Facing the same deficit midway through the fourth quarter, senior corner Dan Wilk was flagged for a phantom pass interference call that enabled the Tigers to drive down for a chip-shot field goal. Coach Al Bagnoli received no clear explanation.

“One guy said [Wilk] couldn’t extend his arm, one guy said he dove with two hands and extended it,” the veteran coach said.

Perhaps most embarrassingly, the referees gave Princeton five downs in a row in a miscommunication following a botched snap that moved the Tigers back to midfield late in the third quarter.

But the biggest mistakes that led to Penn’s undoing ultimately lie at the feet of the Red and Blue themselves.

Sophomore quarterback Alek Torgersen had one of the best games of his career, completing 40 of 61 passes for 349 yards and two scores, but also served up two picks with the Quakers trailing.

It’s no surprise that Torgersen was forced to throw 61 times, though: The running game managed to backslide even further from last week’s 23-carry, 37-yard debacle against Brown. This time, the Red and Blue carried the ball 26 times for six yards. No, that is not a typo.

The normally reliable kicker Jimmy Gammill missed a makable 43-yard field goal on Penn’s first drive of the game. Jackson let what would have been an interception in the end zone bounce off his hands on Princeton’s final scoring drive.

And, worst of all, the Quakers managed to squander a first and goal from the two-yard line on their second possession. Run-and-gun quarterback Adam Strouss fumbled twice on a rollout to the left, leading to an 85-yard return by Tigers cornerback Dorian Williams that set up a field goal.

“It was a big play,” said Bagnoli, perhaps the understatement of the afternoon.

Penn’s disastrous sequence in the red zone resulted in a 10-point swing, and forced the offense to play from behind the rest of the way as the Tigers teed off on Torgersen.

To be sure, the Quakers fought hard. It was undoubtedly their best defensive effort of the season. And the connections that Torgersen has been able to build with Kulcsar (16 catches) and Justin Watson (touchdowns in two straight weeks) make Penn’s offense a force to be reckoned with when it’s firing on all cylinders.

Bad calls or not, the Red and Blue had a chance to come into Princeton and deal their biggest rival a season-killing loss on national television. By all accounts, they could have — and should have — won.

But they didn’t, and that’s the fact that will haunt them more than anything else.

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