Against Yale on Friday, the Penn women's tennis team found itself tied 2-2, winning two of the first three singles matches after dropping the all-important doubles point.
The Quakers needed to take two of the remaining three matches in order to leave New Haven, Conn., with a win.
But the Bulldogs were resilient, and they handed the defending Ivy League champions their first loss of the 2008 Ancient Eight campaign.
Penn had a chance to rebound on Saturday, and it capitalized, winning 5-2 against Brown.
Senior co-captain Yulia Rivelis emphasized that, against Yale, all of the "matches all could have gone either way."
But in the end, too many matches went in Yale's favor. From the outset, the Bulldogs (7-8, 3-0 Ivy) gave No. 63 Penn (7-7, 2-1) no quarter. They swept the doubles point. The Red and Blue's No. 27 team of Ekaterina Kosminskaya and Julia Koulbitskaya came closest to snatching a win, but fell just short at 8-7.
Penn coach Mike Dowd attributed the team loss to a lack of poise.
"Over the last few matches, we've lost confidence - now, we're just overthinking it," he said. "We've had match points to win doubles, and now we're losing perspective."
In Providence, R.I., one day later, the Quakers got off to another slow start, losing the doubles point despite a solid contribution from the Kosminskaya-Koulbitskaya tandem. The pairing reestablished its dominance against Brown's first team of of Marisa Schonfeld and Tanja Vucetic, handily dispatching them 8-2.
This time, though, Quakers ran rampant in singles play and dropped only one match.
Kosminskaya, Penn's star sophomore, played what Dowd called "one of the best matches [he'd] seen all year" against the streaking Bianca Aboubakare. The Bears' No. 1 had come off wins against Princeton's and Yale's best singles players, but was outlasted by Kosminskaya in a 3-6, 6-2, 6-0 battle.
At No. 2 for Penn, Yulia Rivelis turned in a heroic three-set performance, splitting two close sets before unleashing a transcendent third to sink Sara Mansur 6-7, 7-6, 6-0.
Looking ahead, Dowd said he wants to improve his team's doubles play and confidence.
"We've just got to keep practicing," he said. "The more we practice, the faster we can start to get things clicking again, and confident in our skill. There's just mental lapses in a couple games that are hurting us - we miss three returns in one game, and the next thing you know, it's break point."
