M. Lax stretch run starts at 'Nova

The Quakers face Villanova before closing the season against two top-10 teams. With three games left in a season marked by enough ups and downs to make Chuck Yeager queasy, the Penn men's lacrosse team has everything to gain and nothing to lose. The team reached an early season apex six games in after an 18-5 humiliation of Lafayette. The Quakers then boasted a 5-1 record and a No. 14 national ranking. Three straight one-goal Ivy losses, however, made quick work of Penn's jubilation. The Red and Blue currently stand at 6-5, 2-4 against Ivy foes. With matchups against Syracuse and Delaware -- both ranked in the top 10 -- looming in the distance, tonight's 7 p.m. showdown with regional rival Villanova is vital to Penn hopes. "We definitely want to win all three games," Penn senior tri-captain Ziggy Majumdar said. "If that happens, starting with Villanova, that would salvage everything." In light of this past weekend's gut-wrenching 10-6 loss at Brown, the Penn squad looks to tonight's encounter with the 6-5 Wildcats as a potential pain reliever. The Quakers want to take a step back, regroup and ready themselves for a grand finale. "I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that I want us to be loose against Villanova," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "I'd like to see us come out poised and confident, ready to put the Brown game behind us. This team still has plenty do that hasn't been done in a long while." Van Arsdale is correct in saying that the 1999 Quakers have a chance to make some history. A win against 'Nova and another against either Syracuse or Delaware will sew up the first Penn season over .500 since 1989. A 7-7 finish in 1997, Van Arsdale's first season in West Philly, is the closest that the Quakers have come to clearing that hurdle. A trip to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since '89 is an unlikely, although not unreachable, goal for the Quakers this year. The loss at Brown relegated Penn to the bottom half of the Ivy League but victories against lacrosse juggernauts like Syracuse and Delaware would undoubtedly weigh heavily in the Quakers' favor. "The way we were thinking, we knew that a win at Brown followed by three more would give us a very good shot," Van Arsdale said. "But whenever you're playing two teams in the top 10, there's a chance. That is definitely not at all our primary focus." As Van Arsdale stressed to his team at the close of last night's practice, "Now it's Villanova for us." This team is still taking it one game at a time. The Wildcats are a solid, offensive-minded team that could drive the Quakers crazy if they're not careful. One need only look to 'Nova's last game -- a 21-11 trouncing of St. Joseph's -- to realize that this squad has plenty of firepower in tow. The Wildcats have a particular knack for converting man-advantage situations. Their .361 success rate is the 18th-highest in the country. This further proves that the Quakers will need to be on their toes from tonight's opening faceoff. "We definitely respect the fact that this team can score 21 goals," Majumdar said. "We don't look past them at all, and we know we have to have our good stuff out there from the start." The Penn defense continues to impress. Even after the Bears' 10-goal output on Saturday, the Quakers have yielded a paltry average of 7.45 goals per game, placing then in the nation's top 10. Senior keeper Matt Schroeder has let an average of fewer than seven goals past the line so far this season. The Penn back line can't make sure that the team is producing goals with the shortsticks, however. "I think that I've been playing pretty well lately, with the defense obviously being a major factor in that," Schroeder said. "What we need to do is to execute enough so that the defense is not the deciding factor." If the Quakers don't get to advance into the postseason, 180 minutes of game time are all that separate this year's senior class of nine from lacrosse extinction. "A month from now, all that I'm ever going to play is club lacrosse," senior midfielder Jeff Zuckerman said. "I just want to play the best that I possibly can. I think that winning the last three would be a great end for me and for all the other seniors." In order for a player to break into the ranks of Ivy League lacrosse, he needs to have spent much of his childhood learning to cradle and catch and much of his adolescence honing the skills necessary to compete against the best in America. "You see these guys getting to practice a little bit earlier and hanging around a bit later, because they're about to stop something that they've been doing for a long time," Van Arsdale said. Hopefully, the graduating Quakers can translate this emotion into a stellar end to a tumultuous season.

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