M. Lax turns cold shoulder on Hawks

The Penn men's lacrosse team held crosstown rival St. Joe's scoreless for 38 minutes last night at Franklin Field Piled snow flanked the turf at Franklin Field last night and the St. Joseph's men's lacrosse team seemed to be affected by their frozen surroundings. The Hawks went frigid -- they were scoreless for a daunting 38 minutes of game time and allowed Penn to pull away for an eventual 16-8 victory. The Quakers (3-1) looked skittish in the game's first five minutes as St. Joe's scored the first two goals of the contest. "Sure, I guess there were some jitters," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "We didn't panic though. I mean we got a couple of good shots in early on, but their guy [St. Joe's goalie Ryan McQuaid] just stopped them." Junior Corey Comen's streak toward the crease and brisk shot past Penn keeper Matt Schroeder with 10:12 left in the first period put the Hawks up 2-0. But St. Joe's would not strike again until less than two minutes remained in the third. "I think that our inability to score was a combination of two things," St. Joe's head coach Paul Perdue said. "One was the team defense from Penn. They were very aggressive. The other reason was that we just weren't taking care of the ball." Throughout the Hawks' 38-minute drought, Penn put a hurting on their attackers. Perhaps the game's most startling statistic is the fact that the Hawks could only muster one shot in the second period. Their nine first-half attempts were dwarfed by the 31 balls the Quakers sent on net in the same time span. "I think we found that Penn is bigger and stronger than we are," Purdue said. "Our top eight or nine guys can play with them but they just broke us down." By the time the Hawks scored again, Penn had built a lethal 11-2 lead. The Red and Blue offense sported a balanced attack last night as nine Quakers found the net en route to the team's highest goal production thus far this season. "We had a number of guys that made a major impact offensively," Van Arsdale said. The team's leading scorer on the night was sophomore attacker Todd Minerley, who ended the night with two goals and four assists. Minerley, who had a hand in over one-third of Penn's tallies, now has nine goals on the season, putting him just three notches behind team leader Peter Janney. "The ball was moving pretty quickly so I had a bunch of opportunities to score," Minerley said. "I think we looked pretty good for most of the game." Midfielders Jeff Zuckerman and Mark Kleinknecht each came up with hat tricks last night. Zuckerman demonstrated the explosiveness that secured him honorable mention All-Ivy honors last season, while Kleinknecht shot with pinpoint accuracy. "Mark Kleinknecht nailed a bunch of difficult shots," Van Arsdale said. Penn only outscored the Hawks 9-6 in the second half. St. Joe's mild surge stemmed from both its own determination and to a series of Penn substitutions. With less than five minutes to go in the third period, Van Arsdale yanked senior keeper Schroeder in favor of freshman John Carroll. The rationale for this was simple. "Everybody on this team practices real hard, so I think that, if we are in the position to do so, you have to give guys like John [Carroll] and Billy [sophomore goalie Bill Kane] a chance." To their credit, the Hawks never surrendered. Junior Drew Scott kept plugging away and eventually earned the third hat trick of the game. "Drew showed himself to be a tireless competitor," Perdue said. "It was great to see that he still had enough gas at the end." The Quakers could have done without the early jitters last night and they also might have liked to limit the Hawks' offense in the final period. Still, a win's a win, and the 15th-ranked Quakers appear poised to take on Ivy contender Yale on Saturday at Franklin Field.