Penn men’s soccer fell to Seton Hall in a disappointing 2-1 loss Sunday night at home on Rhodes Field.
With senior captain Joe Swenson scoring the first goal during the first half of play, the Quakers (0-3) looked to continue to utilize their home field advantage against the Pirates.
However, Seton Hall (3-2-1) responded immediately to Penn’s first-half goal to tie the game and later scored a goal to put them ahead. The Red and Blue found themselves at a loss when the final whistle went off.
“We don’t have results so we are disappointed as a group. I think we are making progress. It gets frustrating when you don’t get rewarded for the effort you are putting in,” coach Rudy Fuller said.
With much of the early second-half play happening in the midfield, the match seemed to be almost at a stalemate with some attempts to enter into the offensive third. Later in the second half, the Quakers were forced to play defense with the Pirates pressing to earn a second goal.
“I think tonight stung because of how that second goal happened. To give away a restart, we knew they were dangerous around the box, and they punished us for it. We have to be better in those moments, but the team is coming along, and our time will come.”
Senior captain Sam Wancowicz agreed that these small errors made a big impact on the outcome of the game for the Quakers.
“I thought we were pretty strong overall but had some lapses with free kicks and set pieces. I think there is a lot to look forward to and a lot to take away from the game.”
Although Penn produced some shots on goal in the final minutes of play, Seton Hall’s goalie made some key saves to secure the win for the Pirates.
According to Fuller, with this loss there comes positives that the team can walk away with as they head into their upcoming games.
“I think they came out and put a good performance in. When you take a close look at the goals against Monmouth, Bowling Green, and Seton Hall, they are all preventable goals,” Fuller noted. “You walk away being able to zero in on things on the defensive end, but on the offensive end I’d like to see the forwards have more opportunity in front of the net.”
It was a disappointing loss for the Red and Blue as they sought to score back on what became the winning goal for the Pirates, but ran out of time. The Quakers were aware of Seton Hall’s previous game that set them on a high for this weekends game at Penn.
“We wanted a result at home and that’s what we hoped to do. It was a tough game with Seton Hall coming off a win against Princeton and scoring a lot of goals, so it was unfortunate.”
With only four days until their next game against the Lehigh Mountain Hawks, the squad is looking to work on set pieces to hopefully come out with a more successful result on Thursday night.
“We were hungry for a result and these guys wanted to score the equalizer, but I feel like our defense effort and our sharpness on the ball picked up at the end of the game, so hopefully we will build on that going into Lehigh on Thursday,” Fuller added.
The match will take place at home on Rhodes Field at 7 PM.
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