Another heartbreaker for m. Lax

Despite seven points from Pete Janney, the Quakers lost by one goal at Ivy foe Cornell Teams normally don't fret over two goals -- unless, of course, those two measly scores mean the difference between an unblemished 3-0 Ivy record and an average 1-2 mark. The No. 18 Penn men's lacrosse team (5-3, 1-2 Ivy League) has had to deal with a pair of such pesky goals the past two weekends. Saturday's 10-9 defeat at the hands of No. 20 Cornell (3-3, 1-1) came off the heals of a similarly crushing one-goal overtime loss at Harvard the previous Saturday. These ultra-close Ivy League road defeats may be tough to swallow, but the Quakers are light years away from despair. "Emotionally, it's hard to handle two losses like this," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "I do not feel differently about this team right now. With all of the things that they have had to deal with, I'm still confident." The knockout blow came off the stick of Cornell sophomore attacker Andrew Schardt with 3:51 left in regulation. Considering the way the fourth quarter played out, the Quakers have every right to believe that somebody upstairs has got it in for them. At the start of the final period, the Big Red led 8-6. With only 4:11 gone, Cornell's All-Ivy middie Pat Dutton sent an unassisted score past Penn senior goalie Matt Schroeder to stretch his squad's lead to three. The Quakers appeared to be in dire straits. Cornell had scored four unanswered goals and just 10 minutes remained on the clock. Enter Pete Janney, stage left. With 8:09 elapsed, the junior attacker invigorated Penn hopes by scoring an unassisted goal with the Quakers a man down. Penn senior midfielder Bart Hacking logged the assist off of Janney's fourth goal with 4:53 left. Just 42 seconds later, Janney fed senior Jeff Zuckerman for the latter's second tally of the afternoon. This fast-break conversion knotted the score at nine and put the finishing touches on a masterful day for Janney. Not only were his seven points a season high, but he had a hand in each of the three goals that brought the Red and Blue back into the contest. "I feel that that was [Pete's] best performance since he has been here," Van Arsdale said. "It's great when you can see one of our guys step up like that." Any joy on the part of the visiting Quakers quickly dissipated, however, as the home Big Red responded for a crushing and bizarre game-winner. Dutton won the ensuing faceoff at the 4:11 mark. The senior middie was then able to find a hole in the Penn defense -- Schardt was left open right on top of the crease. As Dutton's pass left his stick, the Quakers reacted quickly. By the time the ball got to Schardt, Schroeder and defenseman Justin O'Connell were all over him. They checked him hard but not hard enough to prevent Schardt from getting the ball out of his pocket. As he fell to the turf of Schoellkopf Field, the ball hit off the post, then off the back of Schroeder and rolled over the line for the game-winner. "That was an absolutely horrible goal to lose on," Van Arsdale said. "But it wasn't as if we didn't have enough time to get it back. There were three minutes left." Three minutes proved too little time for the Quakers to once again even the score. Penn won the faceoff immediately after the goal but failed to send any high-quality shots at Justin Cynar, Cornell's freshman keeper. Saturday's heartbreaking finish ought not cloud the fact that the game was a veritable dead heat. "I think it was very evenly played," Van Arsdale said. "It was a game where they got the better of two quarters and we got the better of two quarters." The game was a statistical wash. Penn had 29 shots, while Cornell posted 28. The Quakers scooped up 26 ground balls and the Big Red managed to corral 25. The two squads each won 50 percent of the game's 22 faceoffs. Aside from the dearth of blue in the Big Red jerseys -- and Cornell's one-goal advantage -- the two Ivy rivals looked identical. Penn's scoring came from familiar sources on Saturday. Zuckerman's two goals and one assist may pale in comparison to Janney's seven-point day, but he was still integral. Junior Chris Wolfe, freshman Peter Scott and senior Mark Kleinknecht each added one goal to the Penn total of nine. The Penn-Cornell matchup pretty much went as expected. They are two teams that play tenacious team defense and boast a solid goalie, and the outcome of the showdown was pegged as a toss-up. "We saw it as a 50-50 game going in," Van Arsdale said. Although Tuesday's Penn contest against ninth-ranked national power Princeton may not be quite such a toss-up, the Quakers have every right to feel that they can win and even their Ivy record at .500.

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