Penn, After 55-0 Loss Saturday, Should Bow if Crimson Rebounds

If the football team is going to get back into the 1964 Ivy League race, it will have to bounce back quickly from Saturday's 43-0 shellacking at the hands of Dartmouth.

Saturday's opponent is Pennsylvania, and Harvard could scarcely have picked anyone better to bounce back against.

Bad as Harvard has looked at times this year, Penn has looked worse. Horribly as the Crimson lost last Saturday, the Quakers were seven points more horrible.

Coach John Stiegman anticipated a few problems with his offense this year when he decided to switch from Penn's traditional single-wing to a multiple offense based on a T formation.

But Stiegman couldn't have anticipated just how had his offense would be. In five games this year, the Quakers have scored three touch-downs, none in Ivy League play. They won one game, when a long punt return for a touchdown gave them a 13-6 win over Lehigh.

Since then the Quakers have dropped games to Cornell (33-0), Brown (3-0), Rutgers (10-7) and then, last Saturday, to Princeton by an Ivy League-record 55 to 0.

Even before the Princeton game Penn's statistics were impressively appalling. In four games the Quakers had piled up just 30 first downs and given up 70; they had accumulated 619 yards on offense and yielded 1129 on defense. And this was before Princeton rolled up 35 first downs (to 4) and 437 yards on offense (to 36).

Penn plays two-platoon football, and its defensive unit has at times been quite good this year. Its five-man line, averaging 205 pounds, contained Brown and Rutgers efficiently, though Princeton ran through it easily enough and Cornell, after scoring early touchdowns through the air, managed an efficient running attack.

But the offense has been dead, and there is every reason to expect that it will get deader. The line features two fine blocking guards in Jim Riepe and Tom Eigar, a converted fullback. Center John Hannum, one of only two players who play both offense and defense, is another strong player.

But Penn's backfield has been weak all year and there is reason to suspect that it is getting weaker.

The one solid football player in the backfield in Bruce Molloy, who gave Harvard headaches with his running and punting from the single-wing fullback position last year.

This season Molloy started at T-quarterback, moving to his old position when Penn shifted to a single-wing. But two injuries to starting backs in the Princeton game made Stiegman decide to turn Molloy into, of all things, a fullback for the Harvard game.

Top-Notch Kicker

Molloy is still a top-notch kicker, with a 39.3 yard average, one of the best in the country. He gets lots of practice. punting, in what Penn's newspaper once called: "the conga offense: one, two, three, kick."

Since Molly has never played fullback, and since Penn lacks another experienced quarterback, it may be that Stiegman will go back to the single wing a bit more this weekend. He has used it less and less frequently in recent weeks, only once in the disaster last week against Princeton