Win gives M. Lax new momentum

The Penn men's lacrosse team broke a four-game losing streak with yesterday's 16-4 defeat of Lafayette. Maybe the men's lacrosse team should stick to playing Pennsylvanian schools. Penn's team picked up its second win of the year by racking up five goals in the second period, en route to a 16-4 victory against Lafayette (1-3). The win broke a four-game losing streak for the Quakers. Penn's other win was against another in state team, St. Joseph's. Keying the Penn (2-4) victory was goaltender Matt Schroeder. In addition to stopping 21 shots, Schroeder was instrumental in Penn's transition game by clearing the ball to jump start the Quakers offense. From there, the team did a better job with less miscues in bringing the ball up the field. "We had four less turnovers on our clear today, which gave the offense a lot more time controlling the ball," Penn midfielder Jeff Zuckerman said. The Quakers, however, could not find the net during the first period. Instead, for the fourth straight game Penn found itself down early. "We were sluggish at the beginning, some of it was a matter of us not finishing opportunities," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "[Lafayette's] goalie was very good in the first quarter and the first half, I think he finally wore down because he saw so many shots." Before its meltdown, Lafayette opened up the scoring 6:03 into the game courtesy of the two "Dans" when midfielder and captain Dan Williamson netted in a pass from fellow midfielder Dan Hallinan. Despite the early deficit, the Quakers dominated the early going. "We had a lot of great shots on goal, but the goalie came up with a couple of saves and we didn't hit the cage a couple of times," Zuckerman said. "The game wasn't as close as the early score may have indicated." The beginning of the end for Lafayette began not long into the second period. After a Schroeder clear-out of his end of the field, Quakers midfielder Joe Mauro brought the ball down to Penn attackman Pete Janney. Once Lafayette covered Janney, he made a skip pass to attackman John Ward, who found himself all alone in front of the opposition's net just 30 ticks into the second period. The Wilton, Conn., native later scored two more goals with the help of his Penn teammates in a sign of more team-oriented offensive play. "We started to control the ball more on offense, and there also were more assisted goals," Zuckerman said. "The way we moved the ball quickly was a big step for our offense, including passing the ball two or three times before finding the open man." Penn led after 30 minutes for the first time in five games, but the margin stood at only 5-3. It was time for the Quakers to decide how they were going to play in the first minutes out of halftime. "We came out in the third quarter and really started to play pretty hard," Zuckerman said. "We just rode them everywhere, won some faceoffs, and we let the ball really work for us instead of guys going one-on-one." The improvements came from all over the field of play, not just the offensive end. "Two areas where we showed a real alertness was the riding and clearing game," Van Arsdale said. "We wanted to pressure Lafayette as they were trying to clear from their defensive end and got some turnovers that way." Once everything clicked, other Quakers saw playing time and had the chance to put the many hours of practice drill experience into motion. "We substituted pretty liberally in the late third and through the fourth quarter to get everybody in, and the level of play stayed up, which was encouraging," Van Arsdale said. Ward was not the only Quaker to tally three yesterday afternoon. Zuckerman, as well as attackmen Todd Minerly and Chris Wolfe, joined Ward with hat tricks. In the assist column, Zuckerman added one and Janney contributed two.