M. Soccer obliterated by Yale, continuing struggles in Ivies

The efforts of the Penn men's soccer team to win its first Ivy League game in three years were rebuffed in a big way Friday night in New Haven, Conn., as Yale raced out to a 4-0 first half lead en route to a staggering 6-0 blowout of the Quakers. With the loss, Penn falls to 5-7-1 overall and 0-3-1 in the Ivies. The Elis needed two minutes and 20 seconds to put this one away. Of course, no one knew it at the time, but Yale midfielder/forward Jay Alberts' goal in the third minute that made it 1-0 Yale proved to be all the Elis would need in the game. Five goals and twenty-six shots later, the game was -- mercifully for Penn -- over. "It's the third time in three years that we've just gotten our asses kicked by Yale," said Penn goalkeeper Jeff Groeber, who had nine saves and let in all six of Yale's goals. "By the fourth or fifth goal, you don't even feel it anymore. It's surprising... [the only] bright spot came when the whistle blew to end the game. That was about it." Yale defender Stuart Yingst -- who combined with Alberts' five shots to personally outshoot the Quakers 7-3 -- notched the second Elis goal twenty minutes after Alberts had opened the scoring. It was the first of two goals on the day for Yingst, and it came off of an initial save by Groeber. Alberts was the man of the hour once again eight minutes after Yingst made it 2-0, as he took a pass from midifelder Matt Schmidt and put the ball in the net in the 29th minute. It was Alberts' second goal of the day, and he would later add an assist on Yale's fifth goal. With a little over six minutes to play in the first half, Yingst connected with midfielder/defender Brian Lavin for his second goal of the day. Yingst's goal made it 4-0 Yale, which is the way the scoreboard looked at halftime. For all intents and purposes, the game was over. But for Penn, there were still 45 minutes of pain left to endure. While the play was rather even for the first 35 minutes of play in the second half, Yale broke the silence with a fifth goal, coming off the foot of forward Justin Burton, who scored off of an initial Groeber save. Yale forward Mike Hollington provided the final insult, scoring the Elis' sixth goal of the game in the 85th minute of play. When the smoke cleared, the Quakers had been thoroughly dismantled on the field of the Yale Soccer-Lacrosse Stadium and in front of a throng of vocal Elis rooters. Outshot 27-3, Penn barely made the Yale goalkeepers sweat as the Elis were credited with only one save on the day. The Elis played three goalies on the day, two of them substituting in to get playing time in what is affectionately known in the sports world as "garbage time." "It was one of those games," Penn men's soccer coach Rudy Fuller said. "Definitely a case of when it rains, it pours. [Yale is a] good team to begin with, and I think they were very sharp on the day. Richmond gave us trouble for the same reasons. Similarly to Richmond, Yale has a lot of team speed and a lot of team athleticism." Despite this, Fuller feels that Yale isn't as good this year as it was last year, when it went to the NCAA Tournament. Last year, the Quakers lost at Yale 3-0. All things being equal, if Penn has improved from last year -- which most generally assume to be the case -- and if Yale declined, then Friday's 6-0 blowout looks like an aberration -- perhaps a case of Penn having an off-night at the most inopportune time. Yet, such thinking is of no comfort to the Quakers. "This is a tough loss to swallow," Fuller said. "I don't think that it was necessarily that we came out flat," Penn midfielder Alex Maasry said. "We definitely were really pumped up and ready to go. It just seemed that some of the guys on the team were making little mistakes at the wrong times on defense. It ended up that they were all over us and that they scored all these goals "To be honest, I don't think I've ever been so embarrassed in my soccer career," Maasry added.

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