The Penn men's soccer team had one rough week.
On Oct. 20, Penn had just moved up a spot to No. 14 in the NSCAA/adidas national rankings. The Quakers were tied atop the Ivy League standings with rival Princeton and preparing to face off against powerhouse Maryland, a team that the Red and Blue truly believed they could defeat.
But everything since that point has been downhill.
The Quakers fell to Maryland, 1-0, before losing an emotional Ivy League game to Yale on Saturday and being swept away by Seton Hall, 5-2, on Tuesday.
In the process, the Quakers dropped out of the national rankings and, more importantly, lost control of their own destiny in the race for the Ivy League title.
In New Haven, Conn., the Quakers (6-5-2, 2-1-1 Ivy) and the Elis (5-8-0, 3-1-0) played an even game throughout the first half. Each team had five shots, but Penn forced Yale goalkeeper Dwayne Whylly to make saves on all five, while the Elis put only one shot on goal against Penn keeper Daniel Cepero.
"The preparation we had for the game was very good," Penn coach Rudy Fuller said. "We came out very strong and put Yale on their heels right away."
The Quakers had far more scoring chances than the Elis in the first half. However, their failure to put tallies on the scoreboard gave Yale an opportunity to win the game.
"At first they were a little tentative and scared," Penn junior defender Erik Violante said. "They sort of played in a shell, and the longer the game went on without us scoring a goal, you could see them building up confidence."
Penn failed to move the ball as quickly in the second frame as it did in the first, and the team as a whole did not play solid positional defense.
"It was critical for us to score a goal in the first half and we didn't get it," Penn senior Erik Hallenbeck said. "They were winning 50-50 balls and they were winning the emotional and physical battles" in the second half.
The Elis took advantage when sophomore Alex Munns received a cross inside the 18-yard box and sent a shot toward the Penn goal. Cepero made a diving save, but the rebound squirted away and was tapped in by senior Lindsey Williams.
Penn was able to get a shot off in the last minute of regulation, but had no real scoring chances in the 15 minutes following the Elis' goal.
Seton Hall (11-5-1, 5-4-1 Big East) had some early luck which the Quakers were unable to overcome.
The Pirates were able to score just 77 seconds into the game when Sacha Kljestan sent a shot from the left side that just slipped past Cepero.
Seton Hall struck again just over 10 minutes later on a questionable non-call by the referees. A Penn player, who was dribbling the ball upfield, was taken down from behind. The Pirates grabbed the ball and Michael Zotti sent it to a charging Kljestan for a breakaway on Cepero. Kljestan slipped the ball under the crossbar and over Cepero to give the Pirates a 2-0 lead.
The Quakers played Seton Hall even in the second half, but the late performance provided little consolation.
Although the Quakers are in the midst of a three-game losing streak, they still have a legitimate chance to win the Ivy League. Six of the Ancient Eight teams are within one game of each other and all teams have three games remaining.
"We're trying to put Seton Hall behind us, take the good things we can and especially focus on the two or three things we didn't do as well," Hallenbeck said. "We're just going to take it to Brown [on Saturday], we want to eliminate them from the race and take care of our own business."
PENN 0 0 -- 0
Yale 0 1 -- 1
Second Half -- 1. Williams (Y) 75:21 (Munns)
Seton Hall 3 2 -- 5
Penn 0 2 -- 2
First Half -- 1. Kljestan (SH) 1:17 (Goncalves); 2. Kljestan (SH) 12:16 (Zotti); 3. Pedreiras (SH) 43:57 (Kljestan)
Second Half -- 4. Pedreiras (SH) 58:59 (Gonzalez); 5. Klein (P) 74:27; 6. Raus (SH) 80:05 (Pedreiras, Dziamba); 7. Violante (P) 87:23
