The second chapter in a season-long saga against fellow Philadelphia teams ended better than the first for the Penn men's soccer team yesterday, as the Quakers beat Temple, 1-0, at Temple Stadium.
Penn was upset by Villanova, 2-1, in overtime on Sept. 14.
The Quakers (2-2-1) and Owls (4-2-1) were a contrast in styles, with the Red and Blue taking 13 shots to Temple's four shots -- and 9-2 in the second half alone.
"He was not challenged a lot," said Penn coach Rudy Fuller on senior goalkeeper Matt Haefner, who picked up his second shutout of the season. "It was a pretty quiet afternoon for him."
Penn's high number of shots yesterday was impressive, considering its tendency toward low-scoring games. However, the Quakers needed all the shots they could get given Temple's star goalie, senior Patrick Hannigan.
After suffering a broken arm in the preseason, Hannigan bounced back and was named the Philadelphia Soccer 7 Co-Player of the Week last week after 375 minutes of shutout play.
But Penn sophomore forward Richard Brushett, in the 63rd minute, broke Hannigan's shutout streak, to snap what would have been his third consecutive complete shutout.
Sophomore midfielder "John Rhodes turned the corner on a defender and came across the endline and slid a ball across the goal and Brushett just tapped it in," Fuller said.
"I was playing down the line, and I beat one guy around the corner, and then another guy in the box, and just passed it across the goal mouth to one of our players on the far end," Rhodes said of his assist.
Unlike most of the Quakers' games this season, overtime was not necessary to settle the issue.
After Temple's leading scorer, junior Nate Webb, picked up his second yellow card of the match, the task of holding a lead became much easier for the Quakers defense, which returned to its old 4-4-2 formation, after experimenting with a 3-5-2 setup in its opening games.
"The defense is definitely working a lot better now than with the last formation," Rhodes said. "At least we know that now."
However, even playing against a team with a man down for the final 40 minutes, Penn still fought tooth and nail against a tough Temple squad.
"We knew it was going to be pretty difficult for a lot of reasons," Fuller said. "They are a very physical team, and they made it very difficult to play."
Yesterday's game differed drastically from the Quakers' 2-2 tie against Loyola on Sunday.
"What was different was Loyola tried to play soccer and Temple didn't," Fuller said.
Rhodes agreed.
"They are a very physical team, but not nearly as good" as Towson or Loyola, he said. "Not even close."
Penn won despite not being accustomed to Temple's scrappy style of play.
"The game got really rough, and there were a lot of calls," Rhodes said. "We went away from our style of play and got caught up in the calls and arguing with the referees, so I don't think we played to our best ability."
Fuller still gave the team credit for getting the win under difficult circumstances.
"I don't think anybody on our team had a particularly strong game, but that's attributed to a lot of things," Fuller said. "We knew we would have to roll up our sleeves and trudge our way through it.... Our guys dealt with the adversity well and got the result we needed.
"We are not unhappy... we had to find a way to win, and we did. But Temple made it very difficult to play... it was just a very bad soccer game."
