How's this for a must-win game? A contest at No. 6 Brown, against a team that has only lost once this year and has won four straight since then.
The men's soccer team faces this situation as it fights to keep its hopes for a league title alive.
Tomorrow, the Quakers (5-6-2, 2-1-0 Ivy) will make the trip out to Providence, R.I. to play the Bears (10-1, 3-0 Ivy) in a game that will determine whether this season will be considered a failure or a success.
"A win's pretty much essential at this point, given their standing in the league and ours as well," senior Jeff Livingston said.
A similar intense and sober tone reverberates from the team.
"From here on out, I think it's a must-win game for a number of teams in the league," coach Rudy Fuller said.
At this point in the season, with only a handful of league games left, only four teams, Dartmouth, Penn, Harvard and Brown, still have legitimate chances of winning the league crown and the NCAA Tournament auto-bid that comes with it.
The Quakers, not wanting a repeat of last year's disappointing snub by the NCAA selection committee, desperately want the league title this year to ensure themselves a spot.
"I think this is when players are [just] happy to be in contention," Fuller said.
In order to be in the mix after this weekend, the Quakers need to come up with a game plan to stop Brown's big-time forwards: senior Kevin Davies and junior Dylan Sheehan, who together already have scored 15 goals during the season.
"We've taken some things into account as far as what they do and their tendencies, other than that we're just going to play our game and come out with a win," Livingston confidently predicted.
Luckily for the Quakers, they are not the same battered team that slogged through the past few weeks. Injuries to key players have healed, and Fuller expects that everyone on the team will be able to play if necessary.
On the other hand, the injury bug has been a blessing-in-disguise for the Quakers. It allowed Fuller to discover some new talent that was waiting to break out.
"You've had a number of guys come in and have an impact," Fuller said. "We knew we had a deep team and I think these guys are just proving it. I think we'll continue to use that depth to our advantage in the next couple of games."
One of these players is freshman Loukas Tasigianis, who scored both of the Quakers' goals against Yale, netting himself the Ivy League Rookie of the Week award.
"Clearly Loukas has been playing well as of late," Fuller said.
Tasigianis attributed his recent success in part to good team chemistry.
"The team has been playing well and that's the biggest thing. A lot of players have been playing well, so it hasn't been that much of an individual effort," Tasigianis added.
In order to keep their title dreams alive against Brown this weekend, however, the Quakers are going to need to play better than "well."
