This story was written by Dave Zeitlin '03 -- who was along for the journey with the 2002 team as a student writer at the time for the Daily Pennsylvania -- and appeared in the November 4 edition of Franklin Field Illustrated.

Ray Priore didn't need to say much before Penn faced Harvard in one of the most anticipated football games in program history 15 years ago. He may not have even been allowed to — not with linebacker Steve Lhotak W'03, still seething from a loss to Harvard the season before, pacing around with some kind of look in his eye.

"He said, 'Coach, I got 'em,'" recalls head coach Priore, the team's defensive coordinator at the time. "He kicked the coaches out of the locker room and took control of everyone. It was really amazing."

Motivation never proved to be much of a problem for Lhotak and the rest of Penn's 2002 team, which will be recognized at Homecoming in honor of its 15-year anniversary.

Fueled by a chip on their collective shoulder that likely sprouted when they were picked to finish fourth in the Ivy League, the Quakers obliterated the opposition all year, culminating in a 44-9 win over Harvard in their home finale — a game famously marked by ESPN College GameDay making its first trip to an FCS school. 
The iconic Franklin Field serving as a backdrop to the GameDay set, with Lee Corso dressed up as University founder Benjamin Franklin, created quite the buzz on campus and remains a moment that all Penn fans remember. But for Lhotak, an All-Ivy linebacker, the biggest thing was beating a Harvard team that spoiled their Ivy title hopes in 2001 on a play in which Lhotak lost track of his man. 

"We were on a mission," he said. "We weren't letting up until that thing was in the books."

Penn actually got off to somewhat of an ominous start in a matchup of two undefeated teams vying for the outright Ivy title, as quarterback Mike Mitchell W'03 was dropped for an early safety. But the Quakers completely dominated from there, taking a 34-2 lead into halftime with some of the nearly 20,000 fans in attendance chanting "You have two points" near the end of the first half. 

For Mitchell, the highlight was seeing Chris Pennington C'03 return a fumble more than 50 yards for a touchdown, before acting like he was drinking from a pretend Ivy League championship cup in the end zone. 

"Moments like that," the former quarterback said, "you don't forget."

While Penn's defense, which Harvard coach Tim Murphy said at the time was the best he had ever seen, drew many of the headlines from that game (in part for shutting down star Crimson receiver Carl Morris, the 2002 Ivy League Player of the Year), Mitchell also took center stage, finding his favorite target Rob Milanese W'02 nine times for 139 yards and a touchdown.

The Mitchell-to-Milanese combo remains one of the better ones in Penn football history with Mitchell throwing for 2,803 yards and 20 touchdowns with a 65.0 percent completion rate that year and Milanese hauling in 85 passes for 1,112 yards and eight TDs.

"They couldn't cover the guy," Mitchell said. "They had to honor him everywhere he was on the field. Double coverage? It didn't matter. The guy was just blessed with amazing speed, amazing quickness, amazing hands."

Milanese spent most of his college career with Gavin Hoffman W'01 throwing him passes. But he didn't miss a beat playing with Mitchell, who patiently waited behind Hoffman before bursting onto the scene in 2002.

In two years as Penn's starting QB, Mitchell ended up only losing one game — a 17-3 loss in 2002 to a Villanova team that ended up making it all the way to the NCAA 1-AA semifinals. 

"A lot of us had waited a long time to be the starter, to be the guy," said Mitchell, who admitted being a backup was tough, especially because the Central Florida native came a long way to play football at a school he hadn't even heard of growing up. "For us to take advantage of the opportunity, it helped us realize these times we actually play are very precious."

Even though the Quakers lost Hoffman and several other All-Ivy players from the 2001 team — and few outside observers expected very much out of them — the 2002 Quakers had a feeling something special might be brewing with talented guys like Mitchell coming up through the ranks.

Others took notice when they racked up 51 points in its season opener at Lafayette before upsetting fourth-ranked Lehigh to snap the Mountain Hawks' 26-game regular-season winning streak. In that game, Stephen Faulk C'02 — Penn's top rusher who doubled as a track star — scored a couple of touchdowns, including a hook-and-ladder play that featured a big-time block from Milanese as time expired in the first half.
"We kind of knew then that we had a really good team," Mitchell said. 

"After that game, I think everyone kind of realized we could probably play with anyone," Lhotak added.
Few teams could play with Penn, though. The Quakers' 24-21 win over Lehigh was their only close game of the season as they outscored their seven Ivy opponents by a combined score of 284-74. 

The average margin of victory in those conference games? A whopping 30 points.

"That was such a fun group to be around," Priore said. "They loved to play."

As the defensive coordinator, Priore took particular pride in the defense, which was the best in Division I-AA in stopping the run and capped the year with a shutout at Cornell.

The key was a dominant group of linebackers led by Lhotak and Travis Belden W'03, who Priore compared to "The Gladiator" from the Russell Crowe movie that came out around the time and who Mitchell called "an absolute animal."

But as ferocious as he was on the field, Priore loved how attentive and dialed in Belden was at practice every day — something Lhotak certainly agreed with and enjoyed.

"He was one of the most talented people I ever played with," Lhotak said of Belden. "He started since his freshman year. To be able to do that physically and mentally is somewhat unbelievable."

While Lhotak and Belden — who combined for 126 tackles and 12 sacks — may have been the anchors of the defense, the '02 Quakers also got big seasons out of defensive backs Fred Plaza C'04 (63 tackles) and Vince Alexander C'03 (five interceptions), and linemen Pennington (nine tackles for loss) and Ryan Strahlendorff W'03 (four sacks), among others. 
It was such an imposing and talented group — Pennington, Belden, Lhotak, Alexander and Plaza were all named to the All-Ivy First Team — that Lhotak says the defense didn't really have or need a leader because everyone thought the same way. To underscore that point, the former linebacker recalled a time when, on the bus ride to Princeton, a coach put on a highlight video from the 1990s to inspire the group. Lhotak remembers it playing for "approximately five seconds" when one of the players — "probably Pennington, who I don't think ever had an issue with shyness" — requested the video be turned off because, as Lhotak puts it, "no additional inspiration was required." The defensive players rode the rest of the way in total silence, got off the bus, and held Princeton to 29 yards in the first half en route to a 44-13 thrashing.

"I think we did things on our own, wrote our own little piece of Penn football history, and for sure did so with a chip on our shoulder," Lhotak said. "Meanwhile, the offensive bus was probably having a sing-along to country music led by Mitchell."

Fueled by Mitchell — who Lhotak called both the best player in the league over the two years he started and also "the toughest guy I have ever played with" — Penn's air-it-out offense may have had a more fun-loving style than the hard-nosed defensive unit. But the offense had its share of gritty, lunchpail guys too, with Mitchell saying the offensive line, led by his pal Matt Dukes W'03, All-Ivy First Teamer Chris Clark W'04 and future NFLer Ben Noll W'08, "really was the difference" because they hardly let anyone touch him. 

And with the entire offensive line and several other key guys on both sides of the ball, including Mitchell and Lhotak, getting another year together in 2003, the Quakers stormed to a 10-0 record — the program's last perfect season.

It all started, though, with the 2002 squad that wildly surpassed expectations in a way few Penn teams ever have — and got its signature win in front of nearly 20,000 fans and a few more people from ESPN.

"The right people came together at the right time, I think," Lhotak said. "It was a lot of fun. Probably from top to bottom, it was the most talented team I ever played on."