Football Set To Face Penn in Home Finale

In recent years, the collision between Harvard and Penn in the penultimate weekend of the season has represented the de facto Ivy League championship game. But that won’t be the case when the Quakers travel to Cambridge on Saturday.

The Harvard football team (7-1, 4-1 Ivy) currently rests in the No. 2 spot in the Ancient Eight, one game behind first-place Princeton. Penn (4-4, 3-2) finds itself even further back, knotted in a three-way tie for third.

But even though the matchup may lack the high stakes characteristic of previous years, the rivalry between the two traditional conference powerhouses will rage on in the Crimson’s last home game of the season.

“Penn always plays us incredibly tough,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy said. “It wasn’t a rivalry until about 16 years ago, and it’s been a really good rivalry ever since. They do a great job…. They’re one of the toughest teams in the league to beat.”

The two squads have dominated Ivy League competition throughout the past decade, as the 2006 season was the last in which neither the Quakers nor the Crimson captured at least a conference co-championship. Within that span, Penn is 5-3 in matchups with Harvard.

Last year, the Quakers emerged victorious in a back-and-forth battle by a final score of 30-21. Penn’s grind-it-out running game proved too much for the Harvard defense to handle, and a week later the Quakers were crowned Ivy League champions.

Indeed, for the Crimson, the last two games of the season are always the biggest—first a contest with tremendous implications against the Quakers, and then the annual showdown with Yale. Finishing strong is the key to success for any team, but it’s especially true for Harvard.

“We approach every game saying it is a championship game,” said junior tight end Tyler Hamblin. “Being [against] Penn, and having the history of our two teams the past couple years, we do elevate the intensity a bit. But we still approach the game the same.”

Penn’s season has been full of the good, the bad, and the ugly. One highlight was the team’s dramatic, quadruple-overtime win over Dartmouth in the longest game in Ivy League history.

But its season has also seemed to backtrack at inopportune times. Just as the Quakers had seized their first two-game winning streak of the season, the team was trounced by Brown, 27-0, and surrendered over 500 total yards.

Just a week later with a chance to defeat first-place Princeton, the Quakers found themselves up 16 points in the second quarter. Seemingly in the driver’s seat, Penn would go on to commit six turnovers—including three interceptions from quarterback Billy Ragone—and eventually suffer a 38-26 loss.

“[Penn’s] defense is really good, at times great, but not as consistently great as the past three or four years,” Murphy said. “They just haven’t seemed to consistently from week to week put it together.”

It’s impossible to know which Penn team will show up to Harvard Stadium on Saturday. But the Crimson has issues of its own that need to be addressed.

Racked with a spate of injuries, Harvard has been forced to rely on backups at a number of positions. Defensive linemen Jack Dittmer, Nnamdi Obukwelu, and Obum Obukwelu were all sidelined last week in a win over Columbia.

Several losses on the offensive line, along with injuries to sophomore receiver Andrew Fischer and senior tight end Cam Brate, have also forced junior quarterback Conner Hempel to look to new faces. Hamblin and senior receiver Scott Miller have stepped up in recent weeks, and both posted career-high receiving yards against the Lions.

Since falling to Princeton in triple overtime, Harvard has won each of its past two games. After topping Dartmouth on a late field goal, the Crimson easily blew past Columbia in a 34-0 victory.

But despite the apparent rout, the Harvard attack stalled for much of the game. After quickly seizing a 21-point lead, the offense meandered in the doldrums in the middle quarters and failed to register any points on five straight drives.

“Last week, we were very much hit-or-miss [offensively],” Murphy said. “We’re going to need a more balanced offense, a more consistent offense to work the clock, keep field position, and to do a good job in the red zone.”

To keep its championship hopes alive, Harvard will need Princeton to falter. But in the meantime, little would be sweeter for the Crimson than to avenge last year’s defeat on Senior Day.

“We’ve got two games in the season left, and they’re all extremely important,” said senior wide receiver Ricky Zorn. “Penn’s the first one, so we have to be fully focused and play it like it’s a championship game. That’s the mentality that we’re going to have going into the game.”