PENN VS PRINCETON FOR THE 100TH TIME
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PENN QUARTERBACK KEIFFER GARTON As November starts, it means the beginning of the end for the college football season. With league titles and postseason bids up for grabs, it’s a big weekend for the Philadelphia-area teams. Friday night, Penn (4–3, 3–1 Ivy) travels to Princeton; it will be the 100th meeting between the Quakers […][/caption]
PENN QUARTERBACK KEIFFER GARTON
As November starts, it means the beginning of the end for the college football season. With league titles and postseason bids up for grabs, it’s a big weekend for the Philadelphia-area teams.
Friday night, Penn (4–3, 3–1 Ivy) travels to Princeton; it will be the 100th meeting between the Quakers and the Tigers. In the series, Princeton has the advantage 63–35–1 but under head coach Al Bagnoli, Penn has gone 11–5. In addition to trying to guarantee the 16th winning season in Bagnoli’s 17 years, the Quakers are making an effort to stay in the Ivy League title race. Last week’s 34–27 loss to Brown has Penn in second place tied with Harvard, each with one loss in the Ivy and scheduled to meet next week at Franklin Field in the next-to-last game of the campaign.
The Penn-Princeton is always a big game but it will get ramped up even more because it’s the 100th meeting and it will be carried live nationally on ESPNU. While acknowledging that the circumstances are good for the league and his team’s excitement level is high, Bagnoli is concerned with how playing on Friday night will affect the Quakers readiness.
“It’s like chaos trying to prepare,” he said. “The short week has caused some issues, in terms of having to redo all of our practice templates and being very cognizant of the players’ recovery times and emotional level.”
Plus, Bagnoli - who is going for win 199 in his coaching career - will be using his third quarterback of the season. Kyle Olson and Robert Irvin have split time but Olson injured his knee against Brown and is out. Irvin, a senior, is banged up as well with a shoulder injury but he should play, as will sophomore Keiffer Garton, who saw his first significant action against Brown.
“I knew coming into the week that I was going to get out there for at least a couple of plays in a special package,” said Garton, who was 4-of-9 for 63 yards with an interception and ran 16 times for 49 yards against the Bears. “The way everything came about through the course of the game, it was just fun to be out there playing.”
Against the Tigers (3–4,3–2), while working through their quarterback issues, the Red and Blue figure to rely on their defense, which is ranked first in the Ivy League, third nationally in total defense (241.4 yards per game) and second and sixth in scoring defense (16 points per game).
Saturday afternoon, on the Main Line, Villanova (6–2, 4–1 CAA) hosts New Hampshire in a battle of teams that are ranked in the top ten nationally in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) polls. With three games left in the regular season and in a position for an NCAA FCS playoff berth, Villanova coach Andy Talley thinks his team will remain focused on the task at hand.
“We have a mature team,” said Talley, who is looking for his seventh playoff appearance in his 24th season as Wildcats coach. “They look around the CAA every week and see what happens and see that we have six teams nationally ranked. So, nobody would look ahead past New Hampshire, a 7–1 team that’s been in the playoffs four years in a row. They really have captured the attention of out football team. This is the game for us.”
The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) will hold a league championship game for the first time since 1987, and West Chester (8–2) will go to California (PA) for the so-called “State Game.” The Golden Rams appeared in the league title game 13 times - the most of any school - in the Game’s first incarnation. West Chester head coach Bill Zwaan hopes that his team’s season doesn’t end where it started; the Vulcans topped the Golden Rams 44–32 on August 30th.
“In the small picture, it’s a neat thing for the conference to have a championship game,” said Zwaan, “but in the big picture of the NCAA [Division II] playoffs, there’s a legitimate chance that the loser could get knocked out. So we are hurting ourselves by playing this game and [the league’s coaches] let the athletic directors know about that before they voted on it. Of course, that would be big-picture thinking — which administrative people have trouble doing - so they voted for the game.
“If we go out and win, it could be great for us because we could get a bye and be sitting pretty but that’s going to be a tough team to beat, especially on their field.”
Delaware Valley College (5–3,3–2 MAC) goes to Wilkes University (3–5,3–2), where they haven’t won since 1991. Both teams will try to keep their Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) title hopes alive with a win. Another team with postseason dreams is Rowan (7–1,6–1 NJAC) and the Profs face a tough challenge at Montclair State (7–1,6–1). The teams are tied for second in the New Jersey Athletic Conference and the loser figures to be out of the hunt for a NCAA Division III playoff berth. Widener (4–4, 2–3 MAC), coming off a hard-fought 34–28 loss to Del Val in the Keystone Cup game, must travel to Albright (6–2,4–1), which is tied for the MAC lead with Lycoming. Ursinus visits Muhlenberg and Cheyney finishes their season at Clarion.
