It was a different team, with the same result.
After being handed a 9-0 decision last weekend against No.1 Trinity, the men's squash team fell in the same manner yesterday evening against No. 3 Princeton.
"All the guys are pretty disappointed; they could have come out a little better," head coach Craig Thorpe-Clark said of the match.
Seven of Penn's nine players went out quickly - losing 3-0 - and none of those matches were decided by less than three points.
At the top position, senior Gilly Lane lost 9-5, followed by two abrupt 9-2 and 9-3 outings.
The team "needs to just stick in the match a little more, play harder and really try to come through and get [the tough] points," Lane said of the night's performance.
Andrew Zimmerman took a quick 9-1 exit in his first game as he couldn't control the Tigers' Michael Gilman. Zimmerman would go out 9-6 and 9-4 in games two and three.
As emotions on the courts ran high, both Lane and Zimmerman were visibly frustrated during their matches and added to an unmistakably tense team atmosphere.
"It wasn't as good of a performance as it should have been," Thorpe-Clark said. "We can do better than we've done against Princeton and Trinity."
While this marks Penn's first Ivy League loss, the Tigers, who were competing for the first time in over a month, remain undefeated in league play.
The only two bright spots of the Quakers' evening didn't come at the top positions, as Graham Bassett and Chris Thompson each notched small victories for the Penn squad at the No. 6 and No. 9 slots, respectively.
Thorpe-Clark pointed to Bassett as a solid competitor last night, as well as in the Trinity match. During both contests, Bassett was able to force a fourth game with each of his opponents.
Last night, Bassett topped the Tigers' David Canner in his second game, 9-7, and even forced Canner to extra points during the fourth, eventually losing, 10-8.
Thompson, on the other hand, fell 9-2 in his first pair of games against Tom McKay.
However, Thompson didn't let the large losses get to him. He rallied back during the third game, coming away with a 9-6 victory before a 9-7 loss in game four.
Last night comes as both a disappointment and a reality check for the Quakers, who were riding high after moving up the ladder from No. 6 to the No. 4 position in the national rankings. With losses at Princeton and Trinity now on the books, the teams' hopes are all but dashed for advancing further up.
And the road won't get any smoother. Penn will round out its competition with the nations' top three teams when it faces No. 2 Harvard next weekend on Penn's home turf.
"Now we have something to prove," Thorpe-Clark said of the matchup. Penn hopes to be "more than Harvard can handle."
Staff writer Ryan Townsend contributed to this report from Princeton, N.J.
