Struggling W. Soccer hosts powerful Bears

If it wasn't already, now is desperation time for the Penn women's soccer team. There's no specific magic number for the Quakers to sneak into the NCAA Tournament next month, but after three consecutive losses have driven them to surpass last year's total of four losses, it is clear that Penn absolutely must win its remaining three games. And they need help. The Red and Blue (7-6-1), who are currently in sixth place in the Ivy League with a 2-3 record, must hope for their rivals to go into a dramatic and simultaneous tailspin. The Quakers would also still need help from the NCAA selection committee, which sent four Ivy teams to the Tournament last year. Penn might very well have hit rock bottom on Wednesday afternoon when it hosted Villanova on Rhodes Field. The Quakers lost for just the second time all year on their home turf, but looked nothing like a contender in a 3-0 defeat. As difficult as it may be to do so, Penn must now forget about its disastrous second half of play two days ago and turn its attention to its next opponent, the powerful Brown Bears(11-3, 3-1), who will visit Philadelphia tomorrow afternoon for a 2:30 p.m. showdown. This will be the last game in which the Quakers will host an Ivy League foe in 2000, as Penn will square off against Lehigh at Rhodes on Wednesday and then travel to Princeton a week from tomorrow to close out their regular season. The Red and Blue have been able to overcome adversity at various points during the season, perhaps most notably in an October 4 game at Bucknell, when they responded to a pre-game challenge by coach Darren Ambrose and shut out the Bison, 1-0. The match was so significant because it came on the heels of a gut-wrenching 1-0 loss to Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H. At this stage, however, Ambrose may not be so certain about his club's resilience. "We're still a good team, but we lack the instinct that makes a good team great," he said. "We lack that key ingredient." Brown, meanwhile, has been firing on all cylinders for most of the season, though it has shown signs of imperfection recently. The Bears stormed out to a 9-0 overall record this fall before losing three of their last five, including a 2-1 defeat at home to Boston College on Wednesday. The key to the Bears' success lies in their defense because, like Penn, Brown has a very difficult time putting the ball in the net. Though the Bears are in third place in the Ivy League with a 3-1 record, just a half-game behind Harvard and Princeton, they have only collected 24 goals in their 14 games. The Quakers, whose scoring deficiencies are at least as obvious, have scored 21 times in the same number of games. The difference? Penn's defense is consistent and strong, but while the Quakers have allowed just 16 goals this year, Brown has been even stingier, surrendering a paltry seven tallies. In what could be a low-scoring affair, Penn is eager to get back on the field and take on one of the best teams they will have faced all year. The Quakers could also get a boost from the return of co-captain Kelli Toland, who missed the Nova game with an ankle injury. "It's a home game, it's Parents' Weekend, it's at Rhodes Field and they're 11-3," junior defender/midfielder Sarah Campbell said. "We need to beat them up. The team needs this." The Quakers don't just need it for their own hopes. They'd like nothing better than to play spoiler for a rival's chances. "For a change, I want to go out there and hurt someone else's record," Campbell said.

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