AMBLER, Pa. - There were plenty of perplexing things about the women's soccer game at Temple yesterday. How did Penn manage to get off 21 shots? How could Temple muster only three? But most bewildering of all - how did the Owls walk away with the win?
Temple managed to take down a clearly superior Penn squad 2-0 at Ambler Field in a game that the Quakers (4-1-1) would like to forget.
While the Owls (3-5) stuck to their game plan and came out swinging in the first half, Penn had a laundry list of problems on the offensive end that coach Darren Ambrose didn't hesitate to reel off.
"We've said it all along this year. We're not fluid up front, we don't take enough chances, we're a little rusty, we don't look clean in the box," Ambrose said. "And frankly, I give a lot of credit to Temple - they defended with some passion."
After taking a 1-0 lead in the 28th minute on a left-footed put-in by sophomore forward Wendy Halina, Temple was content to sit on its haunches, pack its defenders into the box and essentially give up its offensive attack.
The listless Quakers couldn't capitalize, as shot after shot went high or wide, and any one-on-one chances they had were nullified by offsides calls.
"I don't know if it was lack of effort or just we didn't get a few bounces our way," sophomore defender Eileen Larkin said. "We definitely were flat in the first half."
Senior goalkeeper Liz Tarasevich swatted, deflected and corralled anything and everything the Quakers sent her way, tallying an incredible 14 saves on the game.
Ambrose, however, thinks it may have had just as much to do with the Quakers' inability to place their shots.
"The kid is 5-11 and we're shooting at her hands," Ambrose said of Tarasevich, who is listed at 5-foot-9. "We didn't adjust, we didn't change anything - we kept doing the same thing, and it wasn't working."
If it wasn't Tarasevich, Temple's most valuable player was defender Cori Gallagher, who, according to Ambrose, "started every attack" for the Owls. Gallagher maintained that her team stuck it out because they did everything as a cohesive unit.
"There were no individuals on the field, it was just a team effort," Gallagher said. "We were just in a battle today, and we came out with a victory."
This battle lasted all the way until the 86th minute, when the Owls took advantage of Penn's decision to take one man out of the backfield. They put in another breakaway goal, all but sealing the deal.
But Penn kept fighting, and in the waning minutes of the game - just as the Quakers had done about a half-dozen times before - sophomore forward Nicki White blasted a shot that barely found its way over the crossbar.
As the closing whistle sounded, the Red and Blue walked off the field disappointed - disappointed that perhaps its most dominant performance of the season ended in defeat.
