M. Lax looks to get back on track

The Quakers head to Cornell hoping to pick up their second Ivy win. Mike Waldvogel, the coach of the Yale men's lacrosse team and the only head man to have a look at both No. 18 Penn and No. 20 Cornell this season, thinks that tomorrow's contest at Cornell's Schoellkopf Field between the two Ivy League rivals will be a dead heat. The Elis (2-3, 1-1 Ivy League) had drastically different results against the two teams. They may have fallen hard to the Quakers (5-2, 1-1) by five goals on March 20, but on the other hand, they bested the Big Red (2-3, 0-1) by one last Saturday. Still, Waldvogel believes Penn and Cornell will be neck-and-neck. "They're very even," Waldvogel said. "Coming out of both of those games, I felt that they were very similar. They're both very good defensive teams. If we had shot better against Penn we could have won. It's going to be a good game to watch." Despite Penn's ample advantage in the win column, similarities between these two squads abound. Both have relied upon expert play in net so far this season. Quakers senior goalie Matt Schroeder, armed with an exceptional goals against average of 6.65, has been the best in the Ancient Eight. His league GAA is even more minuscule -- giving up an average of only 4.88 goals against the other Ivies. A bright spot for the squad from Ithaca has been the play of freshman keeper Justin Cynar. Not to be confused with his older brother who plays between the pipes for Harvard, Cynar was voted Ivy League Rookie of the Week for the first two weeks of the season. His overall GAA of 7.96 places him third behind the keepers from Penn and Princeton. "The goalies are going to clearly play a large factor in the game," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "In any situation where that's the case, we feel very strongly that Matt will be able to come through." The Quakers and the Big Red both sport offenses chock full of proven scorers. Penn attackers Pete Janney, a junior, and Todd Minerley, a sophomore, are head and shoulders above the rest of the Ivy League in point production. Janney's total of 30 points leads the league and Minerley's total of 28 puts him 11 ahead of any other Ivy scorer. Senior middie Jeff Zuckerman rounds out a Red and Blue triumvirate atop the list of Ancient Eight goal-scorers. "The way to play against a team that plays a good team defense like Cornell is to counter with good team offense," Van Arsdale said. "We know we have to move the ball around, and we know that we have enough weapons to do that." Senior Josh Morgan, who was Cornell's fourth-leading scorer last season, led the Big Red attack against Yale with three goals and an assist. In last year's 14-10 defeat of the Quakers, Cornell showed that any one of its players has the ability to explode offensively. Then-junior attacker Michael Voris scored a career-high six points on four goals and two assists, as the Big Red defeated the Quakers at Franklin Field -- upping their lead in the all-time Penn-Cornell series to 50-20-3. "Cornell can score, but what's really striking is their very athletic midfielders," Waldvogel said. Pat Dutton heads up the Cornell midfield. Van Arsdale described Dutton as "maybe the best athlete you'll find in Ivy lacrosse." The senior from upstate New York led the Big Red in scoring two seasons ago and was second last year en route to being named an honorable mention All-American. "We know that they have a tough midfield, so that's something we key in on," Penn senior co-captain Ziggy Majumdar said. "Basically, we do this for every other team, and we're not doing anything much differently." If the Penn defense doesn't do anything differently, the Quakers will be in good shape tomorrow. The Red and Blue long sticks have prevented many a solid chance this season. In a telling instance, the Penn defense, headed by Schroeder, held Yale to a mere two tallies in this season's Ivy-opener. The Quakers, in a flash of brilliance, restricted the Elis to zero goals for nearly three quarters after Yale opened the scoring. This came against the same squad that just past Saturday sprinted ahead of Cornell with a 6-0 run. In spite of its breakdown against Yale, the Cornell defense will undoubtedly prove pesky tomorrow. "We know that we will need to move the ball quickly to beat their defense," Janney said. In addition to laying down a gameplan to follow in Ithaca, Van Arsdale and his staff have worked their players to the bone. "When you have the opportunity to have a whole week to prepare for one game you're going to work harder than at any other time, and that's what we've done," Majumdar said. After a Wednesday practice that pushed the Quakers to the limits of fatigue, Minerley, whose brother graduated from Cornell last year, remarked on the importance of tomorrow's battle. "Right now, this is the most important game of the year."