NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The University of Pennsylvania football team was unable to keep pace with Yale on Saturday afternoon at the Yale Bowl, dropping a 42-28 decision to the Bulldogs. The loss pinned the Quakers with a 2-4 overall record and an 0-3 mark in Ivy League play, while Yale improved to 3-3 overall and 2-1 in Ivy play.
Quaker Notemeal
*Yale has won four straight games against Penn.
*Dating back to 2019, the Quakers have dropped four consecutive Ivy League games.
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Aidan Sayin saw his first collegiate action for Penn. He was the first freshman signal caller to take a snap for the Quakers since Alek Torgersen in November of 2013. Sayin finished the day 12-of-28 passing for 114 yards, two TDs and one INT.
*Sayin's TD pass in the third quarter was the first scoring play through the air for the Quakers since the season opener at Bucknell.
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Owen Goldsberry had a 70-yard kickoff return and he also hauled in his first career TD pass. He currently leads the Ivy League in kick return average at 29.8 yards per return.
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Isaiah Malcome rushed for 81 yards and a TD. He has scored a rushing TD in four straight games for Penn. He also caught two passes for eight yards and a TD.
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Brian O'Neill had his first interception of the season. It was the fifth pick of his career.
How It Happened
Yale went right to work drawing first blood on Saturday. Following a Penn three-and-out, the Bulldogs got the ball right at midfield and used just six plays to get on the board. The 11-yard scoring play came when Ryan Lindley took a bubble screen pass from Nolan Grooms and beat a pair of Penn defenders to the right pylon.
Penn used a sustained drive to get back level. The Quakers ran 16 plays and took nearly seven minutes off the clock to drive 75 yards, with
Trey Flowers taking it up the gut for a 2-yard score to tie things up at 7-7.
Yale went back in front with a sustained drive of its own. The Bulldogs used 7:06 of game time to cover 86 yards to go back in front. The scoring play came from Grooms who took the ball up the middle, shook off a tackler, and won a footrace to the right corner of the end zone for an eight-yard conversion.
Penn had another nice drive after that, getting the ball all the way down to Yale's 26. On a fourth-and-2 play the Quakers were called for too many men on the field, and
Aidan Sayin was unable to hit
Ryan Cragun on a fourth-and-7 pass play that turned the ball back over to Yale.
The Bulldogs doubled their lead. The key play came on third-and-15, when Grooms found Mason Tipton down the left sideline for a 33-yard pass play that put the ball on Penn's 1-yard line. Spencer Alston took it from there, running it in for a 21-7 lead.
Penn needed just 45 seconds to respond, thanks largely to
Owen Goldsberry's 70-yard kickoff return that had the Quakers starting on Yale's 27-yard line. Just four plays later, Malcome covered 16 yards when he broke through the left side of the line and into daylight to paydirt.
Rather than bleed the clock, Yale scored quickly for the fourth time in as many possessions in the game. Using just 1:45 of game time, Grooms found Tipton who beat his man down the right sideline and caught the ball in the end zone for a 26-yard TD pass. The 75-yard drive took just six plays, and the teams went to the locker rooms with the hosts up, 28-14.
Penn created its own luck early in the third quarter when
Brian O'Neill sniffed out a Yale pass play and intercepted it at the Bulldogs' 43. The Quakers took advantage, needing just four plays to get within 28-21 as Sayin faked a handoff and found Goldsberry up the middle for a 15-yard score.
Just when it seemed like the Quakers might have the momentum, though, Yale struck back. The Bulldogs marched right down the field, covering 47 of the 75 yards when Grooms hit an in-stride Tipton to the Quakers' 6-yard line. From there, the sophomore quarterback scrambled to his right to avoid Penn's rush and ran into wide open spaces for an easy score that made it 35-21.
After Penn went three-and-out, Yale used another scoring drive to double up the score. This time the Bulldogs needed six plays to go 69 yards, the big play again coming through the air as Grooms hit Chase Nenad for 30 yards to the Penn 5-yard line. Elliott McElwain ran it in from there and Yale's lead was 42-21.
Penn made its own attempt to go over the top when, just on the Yale side of midfield, Sayin tried to air it out to Goldsberry down the middle. Instead, Yale's Dathan Hickey leaped and made an acrobatic interception at the Bulldogs' 6-yard line.
Penn scored the only points of the fourth quarter with just under five minutes left, when Sayin found Malcome alone on the right side and tossed a short pass that the senior back took untouched into the end zone. The drive took 18 plays, covered 90 yards, and took more than seven minutes of game time.
Up Next
Penn returns to Franklin Field for its next two games, starting next Saturday when the Quakers host Brown at 1 p.m.
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