W. Lax tries for .500 season

Team faces Rutgers,Team faces Rutgers,Lafayette on the road The Penn women's lacrosse team has already completed its Ivy League schedule for the season, finishing with a .500 winning percentage. The Quakers will attempt to match that pace overall in their last two games of the season. Penn travels to New Brunswick, N.J., tonight to battle Rutgers. The Quakers are trying to rebound from Saturday's loss to Yale in New Haven, Ct. Tomorrow Penn will close out its season with a makeup game against Lafayette. The two were originally scheduled to play last Tuesday in Lafayette, Pa., but the game was postponed due to rain. The Quakers (4-6) feel that Rutgers is a team that they should have little trouble defeating. "We crushed them last year," senior attacker Alanna Wren said. "We don't really know too much about this year's team, but they supposedly have one good player who takes a lot of shots and scores a lot of goals. If that's the case, we'll probably concentrate on trying to stop her." The Rutgers team has been compared to Lehigh, which it was scheduled to play earlier in the season, but the game was rained out. Although Penn should be able to defeat Rutgers, the team feels that it is important to play at the top of its ability for the entire game. "We want to play together and play hard," Wren said. "We just want to do all the basics well. We have to have a balanced attack and play solid defense for all 60 minutes. No letdowns, no lapses." Unfortunately, the Quakers have only played two games that way this season. In its home games against Harvard and Brown, Penn seemed invincible, playing aggressive, fundamentally sound lacrosse in both halves. In many of their other games, the Quakers have been stronger in one half then the other. Against Yale, for example, Penn jumped out to an early lead, but wound up losing, 10-6. Regardless of the outcome of these last two games, the Quakers improved greatly on last year's performance. They tripled their Ivy League victory total of 1995, defeating such teams as arch-rival Cornell and the team they had never before beaten in Ivy League competition, Harvard. Still, evening up its overall record is not Penn's only motive for wanting to beat Rutgers and Lafayette. "Everyone wants to win these games so that the seniors can go out on a winning note," Wren said. "If we play together, we should definitely come out on top."