M. Soccer losing streak hits five with loss to Elis

With a 3-0 loss to 24th-ranked yale, the Penn men's soccer team remained winless in the Ivy League. If four of your last five opponents are ranked in the top 25 teams in the country and you're not, it's quite likely that you won't come out of these games unscathed. This has been the scenario in which the Penn men's soccer team has found itself recently. The Quakers have lost five in a row, the latest a 3-0 defeat Saturday at the hands of 24th-ranked Yale. "While we'd really like to have more wins and we were sitting at 3-4-2 right at the hump, we knew the second half of the season was going to be a really difficult part of the schedule," Penn coach Rudy Fuller said. "But to the guys' credit, they've continued to work hard and I would expect us for the final three games to come out strong as well." The Quakers came out strong on Saturday, but the Elis were too much to handle. Early on, play was dominated by the Yale midfield, which led to two first-half goals. "They had really talented midfielders," Penn freshman William Libby said. "We didn't know how to pick them up in the beginning of play and that really cost us." Penn adjusted to Yale's play at the end of the first half but by then it was too late. The Elis opened the scoring at 7:46 into the game. Yale freshman phenom Jay Alberts received a nice through pass from Matt Schmitz and put the ball past Penn goalie Mike O'Connor. Yale added to its lead when Jac Gould scored an unassisted goal at 26:15 in the first half. However, even down 2-0 at halftime, Fuller still believed that Penn still had a chance to win the game. "I told the guys that whoever got the next goal I felt would win the game," he said. "If we had gotten a goal we could have disrupted their flow of play and then gotten a second one. But they were able to score and we weren't able to come back from 3-0 on a team of Yale's caliber." Penn did have opportunities early in the second frame to score. With less than five minutes gone by, Penn captain Reggie Brown passed through to freshman Eric Mandel. The forward was able to get his foot on it but the ball went just wide of the goal. Yale was able to clinch the victory with another goal from Alberts with 4:24 remaining in the game. "All of their goals were quality goals," Fuller said. "They have four or five quality players in the attack and those guys did well to get the goals that they did." Penn's suffering on the offensive end was also due to a talented Yale backfield and goalie. The shutout was the Elis' eighth of the year and the 10th of goalie David Bochmer's career. "They were an overall really solid team," Libby said. "We could learn a lot from them." At 0-4-1, Penn remains winless in the Ivy League. Yale, however, has a legitimate shot at the Ivy title. Wins against Princeton and Cornell would place the Elis in a first place tie with the Tigers and Big Red. While the Quakers have ruined their chance to play spoiler to Yale, they have another shot against Princeton on Saturday. "A loss to us would really damage things for Princeton," Fuller said. "We also are still trying to improve on last year's record and get better every time we step on the field."

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