For Tobi Olopade, it looks as though the non-conference season was just a bit too good to be true.
On a team awash with older and more highly-touted players, it seemed like the freshman track runner-slash-soccer walk-on was improbably carving out a niche as a go-to striker on coach Rudy Fuller's Penn team.
He had become a regular off the bench, contributing his height and pace for double-digit minutes a game.
No longer. After not seeing action in the conference opener, a 3-2 victory over Columbia, he's seen his minutes steadily decline. In Penn's past three games, he's played in just one, for just 11 minutes. The Quakers have been outscored 6-2 over that stretch.
"Each game, different players may fit what we're trying to do a little bit better," Fuller said. "And when you have six or seven forwards, different guys are going to feature at different times."
Olopade's stint on the bench came just after he picked up a hip-flexor injury - a "muscle strain," as coach Fuller called it - and ruled himself out of a game against Rutgers.
Olopade says he has fully recovered; it seems a combination of the injury and him just falling out of the rotation have led to his absence.
"We have eight forwards on the team; they're basically interchangeable," Olopade said.
His playing time has been largely gobbled up by Mike Klein and Omid Shokoufandeh, another walk-on. The juniors were fixtures in last year's starting lineup but had been seeing less of the field in 2007.
With his team languishing near the bottom of the league in Ivy goals scored (five in four games, last among teams that have at least one win), Fuller may look to change things up again in the hope of generating a late-season spark.
And he offered an optimistic take on the future prospects of Olopade, recruited to men's track as a three-time winner of the high jump in Massachusetts' Independent School League.
"He acclimated himself to the college game far quicker than any of us would have expected," Fuller said.
"He's got some tremendous physical tools; we [just] want the soccer side of it to catch up with them."
- Staff Writer Brandon Moyse contributed to this report.
