Penn blows late lead to Harvard

For the first 57 minutes of Saturday's Penn-Harvard men's lacrosse game at Franklin Field, a random passerby would have been hard-pressed to pick which team was nationally ranked and which was searching for its first Ivy League win in nearly two seasons. In the last three minutes, however, anyone could have told you that the guys in the home white jerseys were the poor relations of the conference, while the team in the crimson was ranked No.19 in the national coaches' poll. So it goes for the Quakers (2-4, 0-1 Ivy League), who fell by a score of 15-12 to Harvard in their league opener. The win lifted the Crimson to 2-0 overall and 1-0 in the league often cited as the nation's best. With four minutes left in the contest, Penn held a narrow 12-11 advantage after scoring four unanswered goals. Then Penn defenseman Steve Gross took a slashing penalty, giving the visitors a power play. Penn would pay dearly for giving the already potent Crimson offense the one-man advantage. Harvard worked the ball from player to player, until Pat Marvin found Mike Eckert open on the doorstep of the goal. Eckert easily knotted the game with his fourth goal. It was all downhill from there for the Quakers. In the next three minutes, the Crimson added three more goals, including one on an intercepted pass in which Penn goalie Matt Schroeder was caught upfield, allowing Harvard attackman Jim Bevilacqua to shoot at an empty net from 35 yards out. The result was a disappointment for a Quakers squad that had, uncharacteristically, controlled the pace of the game for long stretches of both halves. "Our biggest problem up until now has been time of possession," Penn coach Terry Corcoran said. "But we got seven or eight minutes in every quarter." Penn's best quarter offensively was the second. In the middle of that period, Penn scored four times in a row to turn a three-goal deficit into a one-goal lead. The spark for Penn's offensive spurt came from John Cusson. The junior attackman scored one of the goals and racked up a pair of assists. In each case, a precise pass from Cusson allowed the recipient, first Bart Hacking then John Ward, to shoot point-blank at Harvard goalie Rob Lyng. That successful sequence in the Harvard zone was keyed on ball control. "We've been talking a lot more about not making stupid passes," Cusson said. While the offense clicked, the Quakers' defenders had their hands full trying to contain Mike Ferucci and Eckert. The two attackmen accounted for nine of the 15 Harvard goals, including one in the last minute before halftime that denied the Quakers a chance to go into the break with a lead. "They have two attackers who are two of the best in the country," Corcoran said. The Crimson's big guns could have done even more damage if not for several big saves by Schroeder. The freshman, making just his fourth start at the collegiate level, was left alone one-on-one with a Harvard attacker on several occasions, only to come up with saves. Penn's leading goal scorer Saturday was Ward, who went over the 20-goal mark for the season by finding the net four times against Harvard. He improved upon the nation's 12th-best scoring average he brought into the contest by raising his output to 3.50 goals per game. The Quakers, whose roster is two-thirds underclassmen, were up against a much more experienced foe. "A lot of the kids here never played with each other before," said Corcoran, who added the game was "a test of character."