This week's situation is almost the same as last week's. The Penn women's lacrosse team is coming off a midweek loss to a nationally ranked opponent in a game it could have won, and is set to take on an 0-2 Ivy League foe.
However, the mindset this week could not be any different from last week's.
"It doesn't feel the same," Penn coach Karin Brower said.
Last week, after a loss to Johns Hopkins, Brower criticized her team for its poor execution in the second half.
"I don't think we played well against Hopkins," she said.
The Quakers responded to thrash Columbia last Saturday, 14-4.
This week, the Quakers (6-5, 2-1 Ivy) are coming off a double overtime loss to Penn State in which they played, according to Brower, "much better than [they] did against Hopkins."
As they get set to host Harvard (5-4, 0-2) tomorrow at noon, the Quakers will try to duplicate their success from the previous Ivy tilt.
The consistency that the Quakers played with for the full 60 minutes on Wednesday against the Nittany Lions was a confidence builder for the young team.
"We know what level we're at," senior co-captain Lindsey Cassidy said.
The team "fixed some of the things we were doing wrong," Brower said. "We have a lot more confidence going into Saturday."
The Crimson are also coming off an overtime game to an in-state rival. However, Harvard beat Boston University, 11-10.
The Crimson are trying to turn around a program that finished among the top two in the Ivy League in the first 14 out of 15 years since play began in 1980, but has not finished in that area since 1993.
Harvard has a new coach this season, Sarah Nelson, a 1994 Harvard graduate who is trying to end Penn's three-game winning streak over its Boston rivals and restore the prestige from her playing days.
"They're a very different team than the Harvard we've seen in the past," Brower said.
As usual, the main emphasis for the Quakers is controlling the flow of the game and following their strategy.
"We have to make opportunities on attack and be talking and calm on defense," Brower said.
"If we do ... what we're supposed to do we can beat Harvard," she added.
Throughout the season, Brower has stressed that the Red and Blue have not controlled the game's tempo as often as they should, and that has been a major factor in losses to Rutgers, Yale and Johns Hopkins, games the Quakers could have won.
She feels that Penn finally broke that habit against Penn State and can now take the next step forward against Harvard.
