Well, that was an emphatic start.
Using a physical, ground-heavy attack centered around junior running back Tre Solomon, Penn football scored early and often in a 37-24 shellacking of fellow 2015 Ivy co-champion Dartmouth Friday night.
With the victory, the Red and Blue (1-2, 1-0 Ivy) avenged their lone conference loss of a year ago and asserted themselves as the Ivy League’s team to beat.Green Alert Take: Um, undefeated Harvard?
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Here's the takeaway from the Boston Herald story about Harvard's 31-17 win over Georgetown Friday night in a battle of unbeatens: The Crimson isn't going away.Harvard played without offensive lineman Max Rich and DJ Mott, didn't use 2015 Ivy League rookie of the year receiver Justice Shelton-Mosley and sat quarterback Joe Viviano after five drives including touchdow marches of 70, 80 and 88 yards. Viviano didn't even play the entire first half according to the Harvard Crimson story.
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The start of last night's BGA Premium story (with help from a couple of readers who found a really dumb error):HANOVER – The motivating message Penn brought into Friday night’s 37-24 win over Dartmouth and the one Big Green should cling to now are the same.
"Remember last year."
For Penn and quarterback Alek Torgersen, that meant never forgetting what it felt like last Oct. 3 when Dartmouth ran out to a 27-6 halftime lead on the way to a 41-20 win at Franklin Field.
“We wanted this really bad,” said the senior whose passing and running helped the Quakers jump out to a 28-3 lead by the midway point of the second quarter. “We had a chip on our shoulder coming into this week. Obviously, last year was not what we wanted the outcome to be. I didn’t play my best football. It was something that kind of ate at me all year.”
Knocked out of last year’s game with concussion symptoms in the second quarter, Torgersen made up for it this time around, completing 18-of-24 passes for 188 yards and one touchdown and running nine times for 47 yards and two scores. “This week we were real pumped up. Real amped,” he said. “We were ready to play some football and kind of get some payback. That’s kind of what we were thinking. That was our mindset.”
While last year’s humbling fueled the Quakers (1-0 Ivy League, 1-2 overall) what happened afterward should sustain the Big Green (0-1 Ivy, 2-1 overall).
Penn responded to the disappointment by running the rest of the Ivy League table – including a 35-25 win at No. 12 Harvard – to win a share of the title along with the Crimson and the Big Green.
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Check BGA Premium tonight and tomorrow for stories out of the game against Penn.