The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 65

colleges Sunday, Sept 28, 1986 H-E Quakers squeeze by Bucknell I Penn escapes 10-7 victory A bitter loss for Temple BYU comes back to triumph, 27-17 Th PhilacMphia Inqunr JOHN PAUL FILO As kicker Tim Caldwell watches, Bison holder John Carey chases Ivy meets the Big 10, a bad snap on a late field-goal try that could have tied the game. and it's no contest By FRANK DOLSON Sports editor PRINCETON, N.J. As dawn approached on this historic day, lightning flashed and thunder crashed. For the first time in 33 years, an Ivy League school was playing a Big 10 school in varsity football and, apparently, the gods were marking the occasion. Unfortunately, mere mortals were considerably less stirred by the momentous event.

Deterred, no doubt, by both the inclement weather and the prospects of a goshawful rout, only 8,750 showed up at Palmer Stadium yesterday to see Princeton square off against Northwestern. Some Big 10 pep rallies draw bigger crowds than that. "Coming in here, not seeing many fans, it was like deja vu in high school," said Alex Karras' nephew, Ted Karras, a defensive lineman who intercepted a pass by Princeton's Sean Welsh on the very first play from scrimmage to set up the visitors' first touchdown. Four more Northwestern TDs would follow, all set up by Princeton turnovers. But don't let the 37-0 final score fool you: Northwestern, the perennial Big 10 doormat, didn't play all that well in a game that conclusively demonstrated the insanity of today's Ivy League football teams' playing big-time opponents.

Or even some medium-time opponents, judging from the brutal beatings Dartmouth and Harvard absorbed yesterday from New Hampshire and Holy Sarajane Freligh ftvffircr Suti Writer late in the fourth quarter yesterday, the trickle of rain had turned into a raw autumn deluge, but few in the crowd of 15,241 made a move to leave their seats. Franklin Field had suddenly come alive. In the north stands, the Bucknell fans waved soggy pompons and pleaded for some offense, just 7 yards of offense. In the south stands, the Penn fans begged the Quakers' defense to hold the line. On the field, trailing by 10-7, underdog Bucknell stood 7 yards from the goal line, only 7 yards from the go-ahead touchdown and a potential upset of the defending Ivy League champion.

In the Quakers' huddle, defensive tackle A. J. Sebastianelli looked over at his roommate and fellow defensive tackle, Mike Lista. Sebastianelli gave him a confident wink. "Let's get this job done," he said.

"Our defense loves to be put in a position like that," Sebastianelli would say later. "We like to be tested. Our defensive cliche is 'Bend, but don't We keep our heads straight and wait for the other team to make a mistake. Then we capitalize on their mistakes." Luckily for Penn, that patient work was rewarded yesterday. In a nightmarish sequence of events, Bucknell committed offensive suicide, enabling Penn to eke out a 10-7 victory and remain undefeated after two games.

Bucknell had driven to Penn's 7-yard line in impressive fashion, and it seemed as if the newfound momentum would carry the Bison into the end zone. But after an incomplete pass on firsf down, the Bison were penalized 5 yards for illegal procedure, bringing up second and goal from the 12. Another illegal procedure pushed them back to the 17, and on second down, a pass by quarterback Scott Auchenbach was tipped by Lista. On third and 17, Auchenback threw an incomplete pass to Scott Lillis, who was covered in the end zone by cor-nerback Donald Wilson, and that brought in Tim Caldwell for a 34-yard field-goal attempt that could have tied the game. The snap from Jamie Keener was high, however, and holder John Carey was forced to improvise.

He shoveled the ball off to Keener in desperation, but the effort failed and Bucknell lost 14 yards on the play. Penn then took over on its own 31 and ran out the clock. "We only played a quarter and a half," said Bucknell coach George Landis, 1-2 in his first season with the Bison. "If there's anything we learned from this game, it's that we have to play four quarters." The Penn offense was aided enormously by 175 yards rushing from Rich Comizio 164 in three quarters. The Quakers took a 7-0 lead before halftime on an 11-yard run around the left corner by Comizio with 8 minutes, 41 seconds remaining in the second quarter.

Bucknell's offense proceeded in fits and starts for most of the game, and it wasn't until the first series of the third quarter that the Bison managed to penetrate Penn territory. An 18-yard run by quarterback Jim Given took Bucknell to the Penn 35 on that series, but on the play, Given was knocked down and out of the game with a shoulder injury. The drive ended five plays later, when Caldwell missed a 48-yard field-goal attempt. Penn extended its lead to 10-0 on a 26-yard field goal by Jim Grass at 3:53 of the third quarter. That advantage was trimmed to 10-7 when freshman quarterback Auchenbach put together a 63-yard, 12-play drive that culminated in an 11-yard pass to wide receiver George Long in the end zone.

The drive appeared stalled on fourth and 1 at the Bison 46, but Landis called for a fake punt attempt, and Tom Dominick carried 6 yards for the first down. The Bison faced second and 19 several plays later, after Brad Hippen-stiel nailed Chuck Kutz on a reverse for a loss of 9, but the heady Auchenbach got that back on a lSyard completion to Zack Guyton, and the Bison picked up another first down on a 5-yard run by Earl Beecham to the Penn 25. Four plays later, Auchenbach hooked up with Long on the touchdown. The Bison defense began to blitz its cornerbacks, shutting off that avenue to Comizio and fellow running back Chris Flynn and forcing them to run into the traffic in the middle of the field. Comizio was limited to 11 yards in the fourth quarter, and Bucknell was able to get the ball back with 7:08 remaining, but the Bison's rally failed.

"Bucknell," said Sebastianelli, "beat themselves." Much to the relief of Penn coach Ed Zubrow. "I am relieved," Zubrow said. "But I said before the game that, if we let Bucknell stay in the game at the half, it would be close." For Penn, it was nearly too close to be comfortable. By Chuck Newman Inquirer Staff Wrtttr PROVO, Utah Temple linebacker Steve Domonoski said he had been through just one too many of this type of game. So have tailback Paul Palmer and quarterback Lee Saltz.

And include Owls coach Bruce Ari-ans in that group of four-season veterans. But as late as 6 minutes into the final quarter here yesterday, it appeared that their frustrations might end. It looked as if last season's gut-wrenching losses to Boston College, Penn State and Brigham Young, and some of the painful defeats of two and three years ago, might become mere hazy memories. But this is Temple, and mental and physical anguish come with the territory. Take yesterday's 27-17 loss to Brigham Young before a crowd of 64,221 at Cougar Stadium.

Take it, please. Temple led by 17-14 deep into the third quarter, following Palmer's 1-yard TD run that capped a 77-yard drive. The scoring march was highlighted by a diving third-down, 16-yard catch by wide receiver Willie Marshall, a 22-yard option run by Saltz and a 6-yard run through traffic. But BYU came right back. Mike O'Brien returned Temple's kickoff 55 yards, then a 15-yard pass from Mark Lindsley to Mark Bellini gave the Cougars a 20-17 lead with 1:30 left in the third quarter.

That was bad, but not as bad as it might have been, since BYU kicker Chris Germann's extra-point was wide to the left. Temple was ready to take that big win. The two teams parried in the final quarter until the Owls set up business at the BYU 22 following Stan Palys' 33-yard punt return. The Owls were down, 20-17, with 9:11 to play. "This is it," was the consensus on the Temple bench.

The end of the frustration, the bad luck. "I knew there was no way they were going to stop us," said Palmer, Temple's all-America and Heisman Trophy candidate. Domonoski a demon on defense all day, with 10 unassisted tackles, including two sacks of Lindsley said he, too, felt the Owls would score. "I just knew," he said. The thought also crossed Arians' mind.

"We were going for the home run," he said. "We never thought about a field goal." That thinking changed after one play. Saltz, back to pass, was sacked by Jason Buck, the Cougars' all-America defensive tackle. That was bad enough. But before Saltz hit the ground, he tried to unload the ball.

Nobody was in the vicinity. Penalty nag. The damage: a 13-yard loss, a 5-yard penalty and loss of down. Temple faced second-and-28. Bad numbers.

The Owls' couldn't overcome them, and Bill Wright's subsequent 54-yard field-goal attempt was off to the right. Game. Set. Match. Brigham Young (3-1) took the ball 63 yards on 12 plays, running 4:19 off the clock and scoring on a 29-yard pass from Lindsley to Trevor Molini.

The TD pass came on second and 29, after the Temple defense apparently had deterred BYU's march and inspired hopes that the Owls would get the ball back. "Our defense held them in check," Arians said. Well, almost. And it left Arians to handle the ceremonial explanations, the ones that hurt the most. "It was anybody's ball game right down to the end," he said.

"We lost position after the punt return Iby Palys on a penalty and a sack, and that can't happen." But it did. As it happened last year the three missed field goals against BYU, the two fumbles against Penn State, the dropped TD pass against Boston College. And the final score was not the sole disappointing note for the Owls, now 2-2. Palmer, who led all Heisman Trophy running back candidates in yardage going into the game, gained only 67 yards on 19 attempts, mark-. ing only the second time in the last 16 games he has failed to go over 100 yards rushing.

"I made some bad cuts when I had the holes," he said. "I think if I could have run the ball more, I would have gotten more. I don't think they ever stopped us. We stopped ourselves." He carried the ball 19 times, caught it twice for 20 yards and ran back three kickoffs for 70 more. But that wasn't enough.

Lindsley, coming off a confidence-shaking loss to Washington in which he was sacked six times, recouped by hitting on 25 of 33 passes for 314 yards and three TDs. But he didn't put Temple out of the game until that fourth-quarter drive. "It just breaks your heart," Domonoski said. "You hut." Northwestern overwhelms Princeton, 37-0 All that, mind you, from the coach of a team that had just lost, 37-0. Gee, a listener wondered, was he sorry, then, that Princeton wasn't going to have the glorious opportunity to play Northwestern again next season? "No, sir," Rogerson replied quickly, and the audience laughed.

This was, after all, a game so onesided that merely averting a shutout would have been a victory of sorts for Princeton. It was with that in mind that the home team, with a second down on the Northwestern 13, attempted a field goal on the final play of the game. "When Princeton went for that field goal on second down, it irritated us a little bit," Northwestern's Karras said. But surely, if anything underlined the huge gap that now exists between the Ivies, with their scholarships based on need, and the grant-in-aid schools, it was that last, futile attempt to change a 37-0 defeat into a 37-3 defeat. That's how far Ivy League football has fallen and how foolish Ivy teams are to schedule games with even the Northwesterns of the "big-time" world.

All of which must have come as a sobering touch of reality to the old grads who showed up on this dreary day, hoping to revive the glory of a long-gone era. There were no flashes of lightning as they left the old stadium, no crashes of thunder, just a few drops of rain. Maybe the gpds were crying. take much practice to be a gracious winner. "To Princeton's credit, they have a lot of gutsy kids.

I can identify with that character," Peay said. Princeton coach Ron Rogerson said that he was more concerned with how his players had improved over last week's 39-8 loss to Cornell than with the score. "I'm not going to get panicked into throwing the ball all over the field when we get behind like that. It just isn't in the best interests of our football team," he said. Division I It is a whole new experience, and not a pleasant one.

Yet there is no sense of panic. Manlove huddles quietly with his assistants and then they break off individually with their groups. There is patient instruction. There is more diagramming, on the blackboards and on the doors. What there is a noticeable lack of is yelling.

Mostly, there is correcting without blaming. This is, of course, supposed to be the essence of the sport: education. It is invigorating to see it actually occur. Manlove calls the players together and says: "I won't blow smoke at you. It's 24-7.

It should only be 14-7, but it's not. They got some breaks. Now By Steve Kloehn Special I4 The Inquirer PRINCETON, N.J. With 8,750 fans, uncut grass and a broken scoreboard clock, Palmer Stadium did not look much like a site where, a Big 10 football team would play. But yesterday at Palmer, Northwestern, the perennial minnow of the Big 10, found out what it was like to be a big fish, swallowing Princeton whole, 37-0.

Wildcats defensive lineman Ted Karras said that the small crowd reminded him of high school. of standing in the rain, asked a customer a couple of hours before game time. "They would if they could," he was informed, and, indeed, Princeton coach Ron Rogerson tried to call it off when he got the job two years ago. All Rogerson succeeded in doing, however, was getting next year's scheduled return match at Northwestern canceled; Princeton will play Davidson instead. It was with evident relief that Rogerson met the press after the game he didn't want to play.

There were no serious injuries, and Northwestern, substituting freely and keeping the ball on the ground through most of the second half, held the score within reasonable bounds. "Yes," Rogerson said when it was over, "I think there's a lot to be learned from a game like this. You couldn't have convinced me of that before, but I think we had to elevate our level of play to stay in there and make some things happen. "I have every reason to be proud of the way our players practiced and approached this football game and fought throughout the whole contest. I thought they tackled well.

I thought they moved the ball at times very well. I thought they hung in there and supported each other as a team. I never sensed any panic. I only felt positive feelings on the sidelines, and we're a better football team for playing them." Princeton did muster 190 yards of offense, and the Tigers' defense stopped a number of drives, allowing Northwestern to convert only 5 of 13 third-down opportunities. But with four interceptions and three fumbles, Princeton gave away its chance to compete with the Big 10 visitors.

"It proves the old axiom that you can't turn over the football and still win the game," said Northwestern interim head coach Francis Peay. And Peay, who was an assistant coach at Northwestern through five losing seasons, proved that it doesn't Lesson for mud. The field is a quagmire and getting worse every minute as the rain slants down relentlessly. Still, almost 1,000 fans show up. The depth of their loyalty is impressive.

Almost all of them will sit through the entire dreary afternoon, hunkered under umbrellas. Despite the damp, the chill and the defeat, they remain remarkably good-natured and forgiving. And supportive. The home team will self-destruct in a shower of turnovers, and the offense will sputter, but never will there be so much as the suggestion of a boo. The spectators and the participants both seem to have this quaint notion that they are here not for a re-enactment of the Crusades but merely for a game.

Obviously rhey have misplaced their priorities and their perspec- tive. Maybe they should be taken to Norman or Ann Arbor or some other football factory site for re-education. During the first half, announcements are made over the public-address system to lure the crowd to the parking lot to purchase raffle tickets. The prize is a set of golf clubs valued at $400. Widener scores a touchdown on its first possession of the game, but Juniata answers with three of its own, plus a school-record 49-yard field goal.

Widener had allowed only six points total (a pair of field goals) in its first three games. The Pioneers retreat to the old gym at halftime clearly shaken. are down, 24-7. Cross, respectively. Times have changed drastically since 1953, when the last Ivy-Big 10 meetings took place with a George Munger-coached Penn team losing highly competitive games to Ohio State, 12-6, and Michigan, 24-14.

Nowhere is that change more apparent than at Palmer Stadium, where the likes of Dick Kazmaier once ran and Charlie Caldwell once coached and Charlie Gogolak once kicked and crowds of showed up routinely for football games. To the old grads huddled under their orange and black umbrellas, the huge disparity in talent between the teams that played here yesterday must have been as depressing as it was revealing. In only one area did the Ivy Leaguers hold an edge in manpower: Their band had nearly 100 members, while Northwestern showed up with a lone trumpet player, who stood at midfield and tooted the school song to a well-deserved ovation. "Do you think they could call this game off?" a parking-lot guard, tired Princeton (0-2) did little to dispel that image. Tigers quarterback Sean Welsh threw the ball right into Karras' hands on the first play from scrimmage.

Three plays later, senior running back Brian Nuffer's 2-yard dive into the end zone gave Northwestern a 7-0 lead. The Tigers never had a chance after that, as Northwestern (2-1) took a 234 halftime lead and scored in all four quarters. Nuffer led the Wildcats' 179-yard rushing attack with 73 yards on 23 carries and 2 touchdowns. By BILL LYON 1972 to 1981 without ever losing more than one game a season. Under Manlove, they also have won two national championships.

Somehow he has done all of this without ever getting the school on probation. Among those coaches with 10 years or more on the job, only three have better won-lost records than Man-, love's 143-35 mark: Barry Switzer, Joe Paterno and Tom Osborne. You may have heard of them. On this September Saturday, TV is trumpeting Oklahoma against Miami as the game that should sear our souls. At Widener's Memorial Stadium (capacity the Pioneers and Juniata are ready to go at it with no less passion.

Or purpose. Each is 3-0. Manlove, however, is singularly unimpressed by his team's unbeaten status. "We don't really know what we have," he said. "This will be the first team we've faced with an experienced quarterback." He pawed gingerly at a loose piece of sod just outside the end zone.

The grass is real in Division III, and there are no Zamboni machines. What there is plenty of this afternoon is t. Widener vs. Juniata: Sam Dermigny, who coaches the linebackers, is scribbling X's and O's on the gym door for an attentive audience of helmeted scholars. There are only two blackboards in the place, and they are already in use.

In Division III, where football budgets do not equal the GNP of some nations, you learn to improvise. So the door does the job. Kickoff is nearing and you. can smell the adrenalin and the anxiety in the locker room. First Marc En-derle and then John Mininno rise and begin to pace restlessly in aimless circles, around and around and around, going nowhere, trying simply to walk off nervous energy.

Then it is time, and they all come together in a circle. In the middle of it, their coach. Bill Manlove, tells them: "No matter what happens out there, keep your heads up and keep hustling." And then they are clomping out into the wetness, whooping, their noise drowning out the sound of the rain. Manlove smiles, wryly. "We're certainly fired up now.

We'll see if that counts for anything after the kick-off." He does not excite easily. This is his 18th year as head football coach at Widener. He has taken the small school in Chester and made it into an enviable powerhouse. He has done this, refreshingly, without the slightest whiff of scandal. The Pioneers once went 10 years you've got to go out and make some breaks for yourselves.

Our backs are against the wall. That's fine. That's when you find out what you're made of." Widener's defense shuts out Juniata the second half and produces a safety. The offense tries mightily but keeps losing the ball. The Pioneers cannot overcome five turnovers.

It ends, 24-9 Juniata. The players line up and shake hands. Every last one of them. And then they stand around and talk, and the parents and friends drift down from the stands and talk, and Manlove is at the 25-yard visiting with whoever wants to stop by. After too many Saturdays of watching "the big boys" play, I think I just found Brigadoon.

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