D.J. Andrzejewski was not about to let another Ivy League game slip away.
Just two weeks after the senior midfielder saw his team play down to the competition and lose its first game of the year against Harvard, he found it in a precarious position again. The Quakers had fought back from an early five-goal deficit to take a 9-8 lead, but a Dartmouth goal with 42 seconds left tied the game up once more.
As they have done before, though, the Quakers looked to their go-to guy.
Fellow senior Alan Eberstein let Andrzejewski know the ball was coming to him, won the ensuing face-off and quickly dished to his teammate. Andrzejewski then scored the game-winning goal -- his third of the day -- just six seconds after the Big Green had knotted the game.
The score completed an improbable comeback for No. 9 Penn (8-1, 3-1 Ivy) who, after beating then-No. 2 Cornell last week, allowed Dartmouth (4-5, 0-3) to go on a five-goal run to take a 6-1 lead in the first quarter.
But Penn was able to creep back into the game on first-half goals from three different players, and the Big Green enjoyed only a 7-4 advantage at halftime.
"As a team, we stayed positive; we worked for each goal one at a time," Andrzejewski said. "In the second half, we really got it together."
And that resurgence showed up on the scoreboard. Penn scored two unassisted goals in just over three minutes to open the third quarter and kept the Big Green from scoring until halfway through the last frame.
Dartmouth's Brad Heritage tied the game up with his second goal of the day with 7:31 to go, but junior David Cornbrooks put Penn back up 8-7 less than a minute later.
Neither team scored again until the final minute, when Penn lost the lead but then quickly regained it -- this time for good.
The experience of having played an Ancient Eight opponent before may have helped the team come back to win.
"We know what it feels like" to compete in close conference games, Eberstein said. "We know they're always going to be tough.
"This game was big for the seniors," he added. "We've never beaten Dartmouth before."
And Penn's seniors certainly made their presence felt. In addition to Andrzejewski's and Eberstein's production, seniors P.J. Gilbert and James Riordan also scored for the Red and Blue. Cornbrooks and freshman Drew Collins scored twice each, while freshman Craig Andrzejewski added a goal and an assist.
Comeback or no comeback, the team found yet another way to win against an opponent that has traditionally been the greater lacrosse power.
However, the schedule gets no easier for the Quakers. This victory sets the stage for an Ivy League showdown between the upstart Quakers and No. 6 Princeton. The Tigers have been considered a top-10 team for the entire season.
Beating Dartmouth will likely be fresh in the Quakers' minds as they travel to New Jersey tomorrow.
"This was kind of a wake-up call for us," Andrzejewski said.
"What we take away is that we're going to refuse to lose, that we're never out of any game."
