Penn to take on Division II Phila. Textile

Quakers hope toQuakers hope toreverse trend ofQuakers hope toreverse trend ofmidweek problems A trip north and the resumption of Ivy League play last weekend appeared to be just what the Penn baseball team needed to break out of a mini-slump. After having dropped four of their previous six games, the Quakers played a couple of Ivy League doubleheaders -- at Dartmouth on Saturday, and at Harvard on Monday. The results were generally pleasing for Penn. The Quakers (17-12) won their first three games in a convincing fashion -- by a combined score of 34-5 -- before losing the final contest of the weekend. "We played well," Penn coach Bob Seddon said. "We would have liked to have won all four, but that's kind of hard to do any weekend. "We hit the ball, scored a lot of runs, and got some decent pitching." More importantly for the Quakers, who hope to return this year to the postseason, the 3-1 trip improved their record to 9-3 in the Ivy league -- keeping them on top of the Gehrig division two games ahead of 5-3 Princeton. Weekends, when Penn takes on the rest of the Ancient Eight, have been the easy part for the team this season. The Quakers' struggles have come during the middle of the week, when they face out-of-conference opponents. "We should be better during the week," Penn centerfielder Sean Turner said. "We have no idea why we're not." But the Quakers will try to reverse that negative trend today, when it welcomes Division II Philadelphia Textile to Bower Field for a doubleheader beginning at 2:30 p.m. Although he isn't that familiar with the Rams, Seddon is expecting a battle. "They'll probably pitch their best pitchers against us," Seddon said. "They're going to come over here like it's the World Series. They'll be aggressive and scrappy." The Quakers will throw freshmen pitcher Sean McDonald (2-0, 4.74 ERA) and sophomore hurler Travis Arbogast (0-0, 0.00) at Textile. Seddon wants to get his young pitchers experience for Penn's more important games down the stretch. "Sean McDonald will pitch because he hasn't pitched in a while, and we need him to pitch so he can help us on the weekend," Seddon said. "We haven't seen Travis pitch and we want to get him a start and see how he looks." One potential reason for the Quakers' weekday problems is that Penn often uses different players in its non-conference games. But Seddon plans to use more of his top-line players tomorrow, in another move to prepare for the final key games. "There will be less subbing for the sake of subbing," Seddon said. "We have to get ready." In fact, according to Seddon, the main reason Penn does not play well during the week is because weekend games -- the ones Seddon is preparing the team for -- are simply more important. Winning Ivy games is the only way Penn can reach its goal -- making the NCAA playoffs. "Winning and losing [during the week] doesn't affect what you do on the weekend," Seddon said. "They'll be up for those games regardless." But the Red and Blue would still like to win, if for nothing else than their pride. Turner spoke about how the team felt last year in the NCAA Regionals when its pseudo-average 25-19 record was put next to Auburn's 39-22 mark. "We'd like to be able to go into these postseason games and hear our record be announced as 30-15 instead of just a couple games over .500," Turner said. One key to the weekend was the Quakers' sudden offensive explosion, which may have been sparked by a change in the batting order. Turner and shortstop Mark DeRosa swapped slots with Turner moving to fourth and DeRosa batting fifth. "The cleanup batter usually sees more curveballs, and I hit curveballs pretty well," Turner said. "Fifth gets more fastballs." The switch apparently worked, and Seddon will keep the same lineup. Now Penn is hoping the momentum from the weekend will carry over for today's game and beyond. · The team will have to do without second baseman Joe Carlon today. Carlon jammed his left wrist while fielding a ball against Harvard and although X-rays were negative, he will not play against Textile. Seddon expects Carlon to be back for this weekend's games. "He looked pretty good today," Seddon said. "He'll swing the bat a little tomorrow and we'll see. Hopefully he'll be ready for the weekend." According to Seddon, sophomore pitcher and rightfielder Armen Simonian will play one of today's games at second. Third baseman Derek Nemeth will probably move to second in the other game, with sophomore Dan Goldberg filling in at third.