Four unanswered Penn goals in the opening three minutes of play sent Siena men's lacrosse coach Brian Brecht deep into his bag of tricks on Saturday afternoon.
Fifty-seven minutes, two timeouts and three goalkeeper changes later, Brecht's bag was empty, and the scoreboard didn't look any better for his team.
Penn rode that strong start to a 9-0 lead at the end of the first quarter before cruising to a record-setting 19-3 rout of the Saints in the Quakers' season opener at Franklin Field.
The Quakers (1-0) overwhelmed Siena (0-1) with spurts of strong face-off play. Senior midfielder Alan Eberstein dominated the Saints' face-off men, paving the way for quick, fruitful attacks.
Senior midfielder D.J. Andrzejewski was the Quakers' leading scorer with four goals and one assist, while Eberstein finished with three goals and three assists.
Two of Eberstein's assists came on a critical run of three goals in 13 seconds that extended the Penn lead from two to five in the opening minutes.
"Alan did a great job facing off," Penn coach Brian Voelker said. "He was really controlling that."
Penn's success on faceoffs also translated to strong defense. Siena couldn't sustain possession of the ball once during the first six minutes of the game.
After tallying six goals in an equally unbalanced second quarter, the Quakers left the field for halftime with an insurmountable 15-0 lead.
The blowout gave Voelker an opportunity to play some of his younger players earlier in the game than expected.
"There's a lot of decisions to make on some guys, and we tried to get some different combinations in early -- in the first quarter, [especially] the middle part of the first quarter," Voelker said. "We've got a lot of young guys, and a lot of those guys played the whole game."
Siena junior Matt Donovan fueled Siena in the second half as the Saints used Donovan's goal and assist to stem the tide.
Brecht, whose team was picked to finish seventh out of nine in the recent MAAC coaches' poll, repeatedly yelled at his players in frustration as the anticlimactic half wore on.
Meanwhile, Voelker's demeanor mirrored his obvious satisfaction with the result.
"Our guys are just really happy that they played well from the beginning whistle to the end whistle, and now we've just got to get ready for a big game [against Villanova] next weekend," he said.
The Quakers will try to avenge last year's 10-7 loss to the Wildcats on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Franklin Field.
And Voelker can only hope to see some of the things he saw this past weekend.
