M. Squash hopes to go out on high note

It has been a long season since the Penn men's squash team beat Brown 5-4 on December 5. And in many respects, it will be a different Quakers team stepping onto the court this morning in New Haven, Conn., to face the Bears in the first round of the Team Championships at Yale. Since December, Penn has endured the loss of its No. 1 player, had another of the team's top players sidelined by injuries and been forced to juggle the lineup on a weekly basis. Penn will have only five of the original nine players from the lineup that faced Brown. A string of losses against top competitors accompanied this string of bad fortune, as the Quakers managed only two wins after the Brown match. The one thing that has remained constant for the Quakers this season, however, is their positive attitude. An underdog in most of its matches, Penn has managed to play stride for stride with many of the same teams that they will face this weekend. Penn was finally able to cash in on its hard work last week when it finished dual-match play with a convincing 8-1 home win over Haverford. The Quakers took all eight wins in the minimum three games. The win may give Penn the momentum it needs to knock off Brown, ranked No. 10 nationally, for a second time. The Team Championships in New Haven will feature the top 36 squash teams in the country. The Potter Division will feature the top eight teams, including No. 1 Trinity and Ivy League champion Princeton. The Quakers carry a season record of 3-9, enough to earn them the No. 15 ranking in the nation. They are bracketed in the Hoehn Division of the playoffs and will compete with the ninth through 16th ranked teams in the country. Depending on Friday's results, the Quakers will match up Saturday against either the winner or the loser of the Colby and Navy match. Cornell, ranked at No. 9, is the top seeded team in Penn's bracket. Penn looks to gain revenge this weekend for close losses suffered during the season. Three teams in the Hoehn division -- Cornell, Navy and Franklin and Marshall -- snatched 5-4 victories from the Quakers. This prospect has been enough to light a fire under the Red and Blue. "This weekend is an opportunity for revenge -- we want blood," Penn junior Will Ruthrauff said. "We are a stronger team in a lot of ways than we were at the beginning of the season." This weekend, the Quakers will be forced to rely on the lower portion of their order, as they have for most of the season. No. 3 Mukund Khaitan, who managed a 3-0 win over Haverford's Ari Wassauer after sitting out the Harvard and Dartmouth matches, will again be forced out of action due to nagging ankle injuries. This will cause the lower portion of the order to move up one spot each. "We have been unstable in our lineup," Penn coach Craig Thorpe-Clark said. "It may have detracted from our competing, but hopefully we'll go on to get the wins we deserve." The key for Penn, which for most of the season has relied on the middle and bottom of its order, will be adjusting to the new positioning in the lineup against Brown. "The bottom of the order is stronger than the last time we played Brown," Penn junior Ritesh Tilani said. "If we get past Brown, we feel confident that we can match up well with the other teams." Penn will be relying on middle order players like Tilani and Ruthrauff to carry them past Brown. Both have been consistent forces this season, and Tilani was the only member of the Quakers to win games against Harvard and Princeton. Penn's ultimate goal, however, will be to make the best showing they can in their final team matches of this somewhat disappointing season. "We beat Brown early in the season, and we've suffered some setbacks since then," said senior Bill Bryan, the team's self-proclaimed "Rudy," who will play at No. 9 this weekend. "I'd love to go out on top in my last match and represent the Red and Blue well."

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