Penn claims Ivy title

IT STARTED with a 27-13 loss at Yale on Oct. 20, the only Ivy League win the Bulldogs would get. It left Penn at 2-4, with both wins coming on fourth-quarter rallies. It wasn't a fun bus ride home. But it turned into a season-changing couple of hours.

"I just didn't recognize our team," said coach Al Bagnoli. "We'd lost our identity. We had to do something, or I wasn't sure we'd win another game because we were heading into the toughest part of our schedule."

On Saturday the Quakers closed with their fourth straight win, 35-28 at Cornell, on a late touchdown. It ended, fittingly, with Cornell (4-6, 2-5) inside the Penn 10. It gave the Quakers the outright league title. They'd clinched at least a tie a week earlier at home against defending champ, preseason favorite Harvard (8-2, 5-2). There is a difference.

These seniors become only the fifth in the Ivies to win three outright rings in 4 years. It was Bagnoli's ninth in 21 seasons, all solos. His 2000-03 teams also did it, to join Penn's 1984-86 group.

No other Ivy program has done it in more than 3 decades.

"All week long, I was trying to put things into historical perspective for them," Bagnoli said. "They had a chance to be in very, very select company. It's a special place to be.

"This will go down as one of the more implausible runs certainly we've ever had. But it's every bit as satisfying, if not more so. They showed a tremendous resiliency. To the kids' credit, they never splintered. You have to respect and admire that, even if it seemed like our goal was to never allow anyone to leave early. We played a lot of 60-minute games."

The Quakers were without starting quarterback Billy Ragone, who still made the trip after injuring his ankle late in the third quarter last week. He has a year of eligibility left and could return. Senior Andrew Holland, making his first career start, went 18-for 22 for 255 yards. And after the Big Red came from 15 down to tie things with just under 3 minutes left, he directed a 63-yard, six-play scoring drive, with Spencer Kulcsar getting in on a 3-yard run at the 1-minute mark.

Cornell somehow completed a 51-yard pass to the Penn 8 with 17 seconds showing. A personal foul moved it back 15 yards. Then another pass got it back to the 8 but time ran out before another play could be run.

"Sometimes, you have championship teams that make things easier," Bagnoli said. "We never had room to breathe. Will it go down as the most talented team we've ever had? Probably not. But it's hard to win as many close games as we did, unless you have belief and character, all those intangibles we always talk about.

"Looking back on it at the time, Yale was about the most disturbing game we've had. And it had nothing to do with our record. We just weren't playing like Penn teams play. We had to get back to that. But the reality is it could've gone either way. We hoped we'd find it, but sometimes you never know."

A month later, it had a familiar conclusion.