O'Neill reign begins with 1-6 Ivy Season

Sidwell Friends School '92 Chevy Chase, Md. O'Neill was later named the team's permanent coach. An Ivy League championship wasn't in the plans for the Quakers (1-6 Ivy League, 5-10 overall) as the season got under way, but substantial improvement over the previous season's 1-6 league record was, they felt, a realistic goal. A 4-2 victory over Philadelphia Textile in the fourth game of the season, in which Penn completely outplayed the 14th-ranked team in the nation on the road, served only to increase the feeling that the Quakers were a solid team that had the potential to win just about every game on the schedule. As it turned out, however, that game was little more than an anomaly. The true early-season indication of how things were going to progress was the prior game, the Ivy League opener versus Cornell. In that game Penn blew several golden opportunities to score, while on the other side of the ball mental lapses led to defensive breakdowns that allowed a sluggish Big Red squad to slip in for the two goals that gave them the 2-0 win. The Quakers felt their level of play was well below what it could have been. "Right now everyone's frustrated and disappointed in the team and in themselves because we all let down," senior forward Kossouth Bradford said after the game. That game set the stage for a season of frustration in which more often than not the offense or defense, if not both, were out of sync. The only redeeming quality about the Quakers' losses was that none of them was due to a lack of effort. Penn was just too prone to making mistakes on both sides of the ball. "There were way too many times when people on the field didn't do what they were supposed to be doing," Penn assistant coach Brian Kammersgaard said. "We gave up too many goals due to the way people missed assignments. Our performances against Textile and Brown showed us we can do the job defensively. We just didn't do it on a consistent basis." Offensively as well, the Quakers' play was less efficient than it could have been. Nothing frustrates a team as much as blowing scoring opportunities, but that is exactly what Penn made a habit of doing throughout the season. "The forwards who were playing did not take advantage of their scoring chances," sophomore forward Pat Larco said. "With myself, I can remember millions of times where I could have scored but I just mishit the ball or wasn't even able to get a shot off. You can't win games playing like that." The breakdowns on both sides of the ball were all the more frustrating due to the fact that they often spoiled games in which Penn appeared very capable of competing. When the Quakers were able to avoid errors, as in their 1-0 win over 19th-ranked Brown, their overall level of play was able to carry them to victory. But games like that one were not the norm -- for the most part the Quakers were unable to play on a consistently high level throughout games.

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