M. Soccer upsets No. 19 Brown, 1-0

When it was over, as the Penn men's soccer team exulted in its first Ivy League victory of the season, the Brown players simply had nothing left. Time after time they had been on the attack during Saturday's game at Rhodes Field, time after time the Bears had opportunities in the Quakers' end of the field. But when the final buzzer sounded they had only a 1-0 defeat and last place in the Ivy League to show for their efforts. Meanwhile, a Penn defense that has been plagued by mental breakdowns throughout the 1993 campaign came through with a stellar performance against probably the best team the Quakers (1-3 Ivy League, 5-6 overall) have faced all season. The Bears (1-4, 7-5) were ranked 19th in the nation and were coming off stunning victories over teams ranked in the top 10 in the country, but on Saturday they were the ones who were the upset victims. For first-year Penn coach George O'Neill, the fact that the game marked his first-ever Ivy League victory was not as significant as what the win meant for the psyche of a team mired in a three-game losing streak entering the contest. "I'm just delighted that we were able to get back on the winning track again," O'Neill said. "Our confidence just went down the drain against American and Lafayette. Today we certainly came out mentally and physically ready to play as soon as the whistle blew. We should get a lot of confidence from this game, beating a team of this caliber." Brown found out early in the game just how ready Penn was, as sophomore forward Pat Larco provided all of the game's scoring before many of the spectators had found their seats. With 10 minutes elapsed, junior midfielder Brian Brown chipped the ball ahead to Larco, who was racing toward the goal side by side with a Brown defender. But the ball took a funny bounce that threw the defender off his stride, and Brown goalie Tim Webb decided he had to come out after the ball. Larco deftly eluded Webb and easily booted the ball into the vacated net. "[Webb] came out for the ball and I don't know what he was doing, what his thinking was," O'Neill said. "I was just glad the ball bounced in our direction." From that point forward, however, it seemed like Brown had the ball in Penn's half of the field for virtually the entire game. The Bears had numerous corner kicks and indirect kicks near the Quakers' goal, but were unable to capitalize on any of their opportunities. The Penn defense kept Brown at bay most of the time, and when the Bears did break through, sophomore goalie Andrew Kralik was there to halt the attack. The Quakers' strategy entailed marking each Bear with a Penn player, with the exception of junior defenseman Mike Leo – who was assigned the role of free rover. The effect was that every time a Brown player touched the ball, he was double-teamed, and the plan worked as well as could be hoped for. "We knew they were a team that could knock the ball around, so what we did was let them knock the ball down into our end, no harm done," Kralik said. "But then when they got into our defensive third [of the field] we just got right on their backs. We packed it up in the back and there was very little room for them to knock the ball around." The significance of Saturday's performance for a defense that had looked shaky more often than not this season cannot be overstated. The game showed that Penn has the potential to compete with anyone on its schedule if it avoids the silly mistakes and lapses in concentration that had been leading to goals for the Quakers' opponents. On Saturday the mistakes were nonexistent, and so were the opponent's goals. "It was time to get everybody together and say 'let's look in the mirror,' " O'Neill said. "We did that – we worked on our problems and definitely came out ready to play."