Penn blows lead to Dartmouth

Quakers lead 9-6 atQuakers lead 9-6 atthe half, but give upQuakers lead 9-6 atthe half, but give up15 second-half goals Stop me if you've heard this one before: For the third time in four Ivy League games, the Penn men's lacrosse team let a solid first-half effort go to waste, collapsing in the second half. On this occasion, the Quakers (3-6, 0-4 Ivy League) allowed a 9-6 halftime advantage to slip away, falling in Hanover, N.H., to Dartmouth by a count of 21-14. It was the 14th-consecutive league loss for the Penn squad, dating back almost two years. As has been their habit, the Quakers came out smoking. Led by attackman John Ward's two first quarter goals, the visitors took control in the first 15 minutes. Ward, the leading scorer for Penn with 30 goals this season, and the rest of the offense were in top form at the start of the game. "In the first quarter, we possessed the ball and took advantage of mismatches," Ward said. "We'd make that open pass out of the double-[team], and guys would be open." But the Big Green succeeded in rearranging their defensive alignment. The mismatches disappeared, and Penn's attackmen had to make more individual moves to get near the Dartmouth net. The Quakers enjoyed a three-goal margin at intermission, but were unable to rouse up the same intensity for the second half. Instead, Dartmouth's transition game took over. Time and time again, the Big Green broke out of its defensive zone with numbers, a product of the host's advantage in ground balls and face-offs. Penn coach Terry Corcoran called several timeouts in a futile attempt to reorganize the defense. "They happened to get a lot of fast breaks," Penn freshman defenseman Ziggy Majumdar said. "We tried to make some adjustments, but obviously we didn't." By the end of the third quarter, the Quakers' three-goal cushion was a five-goal deficit at 16-11. Dartmouth added five more to the score in the last period, making the Quakers' seven-hour bus ride back to West Philly all the more unpleasant. Unsurprisingly, the Big Green's second-half run was keyed by dominance of the ball. The Quakers lapsed into their old habit of not getting enough touches of the ball. Combined with Dartmouth's counter-attack, which is led by two of its football stars, Scott Hapgood and Brian Merritt, the mixture was lethal. The blown lead in the second-half marked the continuance of a troubling trend for the Quakers. Penn has held halftime leads in three of four Ivy contests, but has seemed helpless in second-half pressure situations. That has left the team searching for reasons for their late-game woes, with inexperience a frequent suggestion. "It may be subconscious," Ward said. "But there isn't anyone who says, 'We can't win this game' or 'We can't do this.'" Corcoran makes less of the team's second-half record. "It's disappointing, but it's obvious we don't have a lot of depth," he said. "We're starting four freshman, which probably no other Divison I team in the country is doing." The loss leaves the Quakers with only two opportunities to register a league win this year, but both will be tough games, versus Brown and at Yale.