Penn men squashed by Red, Mustangs
The men's squash team opened its season this Saturday in Ithaca, N.Y. with a doubleheader against Cornell and Western Ontario.
The Quakers didn't get off to the start they hoped for, losing 5-4 to the Big Red and 7-2 to Western Ontario.
The Cornell match was just as close as the final score would suggest. Two Quakers players, Porter Drake and Nick Malinowski, dropped early leads - 2-1 and 2-0 respectively - in eventual losses.
All but two of the individual matches (both Penn 3-0 victories) went to four or five games.
The loss was doubly disappointing given that the Red are an annual whipping boy for the Quakers. Last weekend's match marked Cornell's first victory against Penn in their yearly meetings since 2002.
Penn (0-2, 0-1 Ivy) will get a chance to rebound from its early-season losses in its home opener Dec. 1 against Yale (0-0).
- Mike Kaiser
On season's last day, M. Soccer reemerges
The cure for the men's soccer team's woes was a visit from lowly Cornell on Saturday.
Penn got an 89th minute goal from Omid Shokoufandeh to give it a 2-1 victory and end a disappointing season on a positive note.
Cornell, which will finish the year second-to-last with only four points in the league standings, took the lead on 19:08 on a Matt Bouraee putback.
The Big Red (7-9-1, 1-5-1 Ivy) rode that goal into the halftime break. They were up 1-0 despite getting outshot 8-2 in that first frame.
Derek Hobson converted a penalty - Penn's only one this year - in the second half to bring the match equal before Shokoufandeh, the walk-on, hit the winner.
Sophomore Kevin Sweetland got the start in goal for Penn (6-9-2, 3-4), making no saves.
Quakers coach Rudy Fuller continued his pattern of giving little-used substitutes minutes with the Ivy League championship out of reach. Aaron Ross was the beneficiary this game.
- Sebastien Angel
As expected, W. Va. W. Soccer cleans up
The James Madison game may have been a 'winnable' one for Penn, but the one what would have followed probably wasn't.
After the Dukes beat Penn 2-0 in their first-round NCAA Tournament tie, the No. 12 West Virginia Mountaineers leapfrogged James Madison by the same score to advance to the Round of 16.
James Madison held the Mountaineers scoreless for almost 80 minutes before conceding the winning goal and an insurance tally shortly thereafter.
West Virginia, which hosted the opening-round Tournament games on its campus in Morgantown, beat Navy 4-0 in Friday to get to the James Madison game.
- S.A.
The champion's cheer: We're No. 98!
Two postseason tournaments weren't enough?
The Gazelle Group, the Princeton, N.J. firm that sponsored the Black Coaches Invitational Penn played in last year, will be sponsoring a third.
The College Basketball Invitational will be a 16-team, single-elimination affair meant to supplement the NCAA Tournament and the NIT.
All games will be held at campus sites.
- S.A.
