M. Lax to seek end of streak

Penn hopes to reach .500 in Ivy play and beat Brown for the first time in 11 years. Ronald Reagan was still president of the United States when the Penn men's lacrosse team last defeated Brown. The year was 1988 and the final score read 10-9 Quakers. A lot has changed since then, except for the parity that still exists in the Ivy League. This weekend's matchup in Providence, R.I., between Penn (6-4, 2-3 Ivy League) and Brown (2-8, 1-2) could prove to be yet another in a string of close Ivy contests for the Red and Blue. The Quakers, however, have not put much thought in playing up tomorrow's attempt to end their drought against the Bears. "The fact that we haven't beaten Brown in a long time is not a factor as much as the players' belief that they have a lot of good lacrosse left in them," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. Penn is finishing a one-week layoff between its 12-3 home win against Dartmouth last Sunday and this matchup with the Bears. For the Quakers, ranked No. 19 in the latest USILA poll, this trip will be the first of three road games in the next eight days. With a mid-week game at Villanova and a road trip to Syracuse on the horizon, it will be a time to get away from the friendly confines of Franklin Field. "The ability to get away and really concentrate on the game itself is going to help us a lot," Penn midfielder Jeff Zuckerman said. One intriguing question will be how the Bears start the game. Trailing 4-1 early on and 6-3 at halftime at Harvard on Wednesday, the Bears showed resilience in coming back for a 10-7 victory. This victory, however, came on the heels of a painful, yet deceiving, won-loss mark. Brown's record includes losses to four top-10 teams -- Loyola, Duke, Syracuse and Georgetown-- as well as to No. 11 Princeton. "We are committed to playing the best people out of the Ivy League," Brown coach Peter Lasagna said. "For us this means playing those teams at the beginning of the year." Players that have been leading the Bears offense include sophomore attacker Michael Monfett and senior midfielder Jed DeWick. In Wednesday's win at Harvard, Moffett tallied three goals and one assist while DeWick added two goals and one assist. In addition, Brown bucked the numbers' trends that it had established prior to the matchup. As of April 9, opponents had scored 26 percent of the time in extra-man situations, versus the Bears' 18.4 percent. "Our man down has been pretty good," Lasagna said. "Our man up unit however, has been a little disappointing to me. We've done a good shot getting opportunities, but we just haven't finished those chances." On Wednesday, against an Ivy opponent it knew better than the ranked opponents it had played in past games, Brown went three-for-five on the power play. Harvard, meanwhile, only went one-for-six. According to Lasagna, the low percentage allowed by the Bears was the more telling of the two. On the flipside, Penn has scored on 48 percent of its extra-man advantages, along with additional success in scoring shorthanded goals. "This year in particular, our team has played great on the extra-man advantage," Penn attacker Pete Janney said. "With [Brown] being a team that commits a lot of fouls, [such an advantage] will be beneficial for us." With both teams knowing each other well -- and Brown's unpredictability coming into play -- it will be imperative for Penn to be motivated from the opening faceoff. "I think we'll see a team [in Brown] with a lot of fire and energy, at least at the beginning," Van Arsdale said. "It may make the start of the game more important than it typically is." The parity of the Ivy League has been exemplified by Penn's road losses at Harvard and Cornell. The Quakers lost by one goal in both games. But those losses -- and the 14-7 road win at North Carolina -- all happened long enough ago that the Quakers do not plan on giving the road issue much weight. "Those games are in the past for us," Janney said. "Right now, we are concentrating as we've tried to do all season on one game at a time." The Bears will also aim to "take it one game at a time," after tasting victory for only the second time this season. "My starting goalie, Strider Dickson, said on the bus that it feels really good to win," Lasagna said. "Then he turned around and said 'It feels so good that it makes you want to do anything that you can so that you can get to feel that way again.'"