The Daily Pennsylvanian is a student-run nonprofit.

Please support us by disabling your ad blocker on our site.

austinkuhn

With only three conference tilts left, junior midfielder Austin Kuhn and the rest of the Penn soccer team are looking to close out the year with a few solid performances.

Credit: Peter Ribeiro , Peter Ribeiro

Another big Ivy weekend is here for Penn men’s soccer.

Currently 2-2 in league play, the Quakers are looking to defeat Brown and rise above .500 in conference play going into the final weeks of the season.

“Mindset-wise we have to come in with the same attitude and play it the same way as West Virginia,” junior midfielder Austin Kuhn said. “We need to not make any errors and be totally solid on the defensive end.”

Although the squad was defeated in their matchup against the Mountaineers this past Tuesday, Penn coach Rudy Fuller felt as though the team played one of their best games of the season.

In their past two games against West Virginia and Yale, the Quakers (4-5-5, 2-2 Ivy) have been having trouble finding the back of the net.

However, that makes the team hungry for the win going into Saturday’s game.

“I feel like it really started to click for us at Yale and we are all really enjoying playing soccer together right now,” Kuhn said.

The team has three games left in the season, as they currently stand fifth in the Ivy League behind Harvard, Dartmouth, Columbia and Brown (7-6-1, 2-1-1). As the team prepares for the Bears this coming weekend, they are going in with a goal-oriented mindset.

“We are taking one game at a time. We approach it as the next game is the most important game of the season so our goal right now is to beat Brown,” Kuhn said.

“All we can worry about is Brown right now. We can’t worry about what other teams are doing,” senior midfielder Matt Poplawski added.

Fuller remained positive about his team’s performance going into the weekend. The veteran coach felt that his squad played to its full potential, but West Virginia took one of its few opportunities and capitalized with a goal.

“If we put in games like that on a consistent basis, we will win a lot of games,” Fuller said.

“As we look ahead to Brown we need to do the same on Saturday and play at the same level. I tell the team to continue to get better each game.”

Fuller ultimately agreed with his athletes when saying that they have to take care of Brown first and proceed game by game. Their sole focus is getting the win over the Bears and carrying that energy into their final two Ivy match-ups.

The team knows it will be a tough game this Saturday, but they are looking forward to a successful homecoming weekend in University City. With their eyes on the prize, anything is possible for this determined squad.