Penn men's soccer coach Rudy Fuller has a bad taste in his mouth. A year and a six-game shutout streak have done little to wash it out.
Tonight, he hopes to find his Listerine: A win against Penn State (2-4-2) at Rhodes Field.
Last season, the Quakers suffered a bitter 3-2 loss at University Park, Pa., after the Nittany Lions scored in the 109th minute.
In the 364 days since the match, a lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same.
Each team returns 12 players who appeared in their 2007 clash. But the Penn of 2008 is a markedly different squad, more than just the sum of its parts.
Gone are the Red and Blue who finished 3-4 in the Ivy League. In their place, an undefeated rising power.
Gone is the team that allowed 30 goals last season. Instead, Penn is now a defensive stalwart. In over 590 minutes of play, the team has yet to surrender a goal, a school record.
Despite their undefeated streak, the Quakers (4-0-2) aren't feeling pressured to keep it up.
"I can guarantee that we will give up a goal this year," Fuller said. "We aren't getting caught up in how many shutouts we have."
Instead - and Fuller readily admits he's toeing the party line - Penn is focusing on the Nittany Lions. That said, the coach has eschewed videotapes from the University Park meeting, saying that the two teams are more experienced and mature than they were a year ago.
Penn should nonetheless have its hands full with a stronger, more athletic Penn State squad.
"We'll have to be sharper than we were this weekend," Fuller said, referring to Penn's 0-0 tie with Buffalo on Friday night.
"We'll have to be more clinical and finish our opportunities because we won't have as much time on the ball."
The Quakers' midfielders will have to contend with the Nittany Lions' powerful attacking midfield comprised of Frank Costigliola, Drew Cost and Barkley Miller, who combined for eight shots in last year's game.
Costigliola and Cost are particularly dangerous when on the ball, while Miller is more of a midfielder and can disrupt defenses with his off-the-ball forward runs.
Two more familiar faces in the Nittany Lions' lineup are Jason Yeisley and Treavor Gelsinger, responsible for all three Penn State goals in last year's match-up.
But the growing pains of '07 are over. Before that season, Fuller put a challenge to his team by increasing the difficulty of its schedule, believing that eventually those early lumps would pay off.
This morning, he woke up to the fruits of his team's labor and persistence - a No. 30 ranking on CollegeSoccerNews.com.
"We weren't too concerned with whether or not we were going to be ranked," Fuller said. "Eventually, if you keep playing well, you're going to get recognized.
"That said, rankings are just a reflection of the past - we need to keep it up until the end of the season."
