At 2-3 with one Ivy League game to play, the men's lacrosse team is out of title contention. And at 5-5, the possibility of an NCAA Tournament bid is getting dimmer and dimmer.
"We talked about it [yesterday] after practice, we just want to go out with some pride," sophomore attacker Craig Andrzejewski said. "The seniors [have] three games to play in college, and they definitely want to win all three even if we don't make it to the playoffs."
With No. 7 Maryland among the opponents, reaching the postseason is certainly possible, but that's not the primary focus right now.
"We probably have an outside chance, but that's not what we're thinking about," coach Brian Voelker. "We've gotta go out and beat Brown on Saturday, . and all the other stuff will take care of itself."
The Quakers face a Brown squad (6-4, 1-2) that is a lot like them - a young team with talent, in the middle of the Ivy League tables, and one that has lost plenty of heartbreakers (including a 4-OT loss to Dartmouth).
Brown has a solid attacking unit, but an inexperienced defense. Sophomore goalie Jordan Burke has been very solid, but is only in his first year.
"They're not great if we move the ball around on offense," Andrzejewski said. "We can definitely score a lot of goals against Brown, which was a little hard for us against Princeton, obviously."
Playing against the No. 6 Tigers, the Quakers had a great first quarter, but then collapsed late. A 2-0 start quickly turned into a 2-8 deficit by the third quarter, and the Quakers' inconsistency once again reared its ugly head.
This week, the Quakers are just hoping that they can play the way they did to open the Princeton game, and to close the way they did in the Dartmouth win, when they overcame a four-goal deficit to win by one.
"We're just too hot and cold, and when we're cold we're very cold, especially on defense," junior defender Max Mauro said. "It's hard to make excuses about our play. It's easy to say we're young, and it's easy to say that we don't have all the experience, it's just a matter of people having enough heart, enough pride in Penn to play for 60 minutes."
Mauro helps anchor a defense that looked like that of a top-10 team early on before it lost both its aggressiveness and its coordination.
"The first thing you learn when you play defense is communication, and we're not communicating enough," Mauro said. "When we played well in the past this season, we were communicating, everybody's talking, has their sticks up on defense. It's just those small things. It's not players playing individually, it's team communication."
So despite missing a key social weekend at Penn, Mauro is looking forward to putting together a complete game and taking his team's league record to 3-3.
"I'd definitely much rather be playing in an Ivy League game on Saturday than trying to make my way through a crowd of people to see a band from 1995," he said.
