Brown bests M. Lax on Senior Day

As they have done all year, the Quakers closed hard but dame up just short in their try to improve on a disappointing Ivy campaign. The Penn men's lacrosse team finished its less-than-stellar Ivy League season with a 9-7 loss to Brown at rainy Franklin Field on Saturday. The Quakers (5-7) finish the Ivy loop at 1-5, their lone victory a tough, 7-4 win at Dartmouth. As they have so many times this season, the Quakers came on strong late, scoring four times in the fourth quarter, including the game's final three goals. But, as it has so many times this season, the final push fell just short. "It's starting to sound a little old," Penn coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "[It was] our last crack at a win in the league, so there's a little bit there, but more than that, it's just another tight game that you feel you could have found a way to win." The Quakers controlled the ball for the majority of the first stanza, firing eight shots on goal to the Bears' five. While Quakers goalie Ryan Kelly didn't let a Bears shot get by him until 30 seconds remained in the quarter, the Quakers only managed to get one shot past Bears goalie Beret Dickson. "I think early on when we were playing pretty well, getting good looks at the goal and playing well defensively, we didn't score as much as we needed to," Van Arsdale said. "A lot of that was good goaltending, and some of it was not great shooting by us." Dickson, coming off a disappointing midweek showing in Brown's loss to Harvard, made some very impressive saves and ended with 17 on the day. "[Dickson] got a lot of them in the first quarter, when we could've built ourselves a little bit of a cushion," Van Arsdale said. "To end the first quarter 1-1, when I really felt we had controlled play, was a key factor. Then, over the next seven, eight minutes they scored three in a row. I think we would've been able to absorb it better had we scored [more] in the first." After the Bears scored three straight goals in the second, the Quakers scored two goals with under five minutes remaining in the half and headed to the locker room down by just one. If the Quakers thought that their efforts had gone unrewarded in the first quarter, they were only bound for more disappointment in the third. Despite taking 15 shots on goal, Penn was shut out in the third quarter, 3-0. Eight of those shots were stopped by Dickson, while the rest simply sailed wide. "I didn't think we were as controlling of the play in the third as we had been in the first, but if you get eight shots on net, you've got to [score]," Van Arsdale said. "Not all our shots were great shots, but we had some pretty good ones. And on some of them the shooter didn't execute as well as they could've." Van Arsdale thought that, because his offensive players were encountering a goalie on a hot streak, they started to press a little too much, thus knocking themselves out of an offensive rhythm. "We missed the cage completely on some shots that we should've made [Dickson] make saves on," Van Arsdale said. After getting blanked in the third, the Quakers came out in the fourth trailing 7-4 and got three goals out of the nine shots they took. However, all three goals came after Brown scored twice to push its lead to 9-4. That meant that the Quakers comeback ended two goals too soon. "I guess there are things you could try to point to," Van Arsdale said of his team's inability to solve the Ivy puzzle, despite being very competitive in every single contest. "It's a game of spurts and back and forth flow," he said. "And we sometimes have a little bit too much trouble stopping the bleeding, and we let teams get on runs." These runs are expected in the ultra-competitive world of Ivy League lacrosse, where nearly every team is nationally ranked. But according to Van Arsdale, that's exactly why his team should be prepared for them. "When you play a good opponent, they're going to get a run on you at some point, but I think it tends to affect us for a longer period of time than it really needs to."