After last year’s 5-0 loss at Penn State, the backline of the No. 14 Penn men’s soccer team came into Wednesday night’s home rematch looking for some redemption and revenge.
Despite a solid overall effort, the Penn defense ended up being its own worst enemy in a 2-1 loss.
The defense limited NCAA leading scorer Corey Hertzog for most of the match, but with the score tied in the 76th minute, the Penn State striker intercepted a telegraphed lateral pass in the backfield.
His ensuing shot got past the dive of goalie Ben Berg, deflected off the right crossbar and bounced toward the end line.
The Quakers scrambled toward the ball, but an attempted clear bounced off of Steven Schalefer’s face and back into the goal.
“In the big picture, we’ve had a lot of good fortune this year,” Penn coach Rudy Fuller said, “and today it just went against us.”
The Nittany Lions (10-5-1) broke a scoreless second-half tie off of a Penn turnover at midfield. Penn State intercepted a poor throw-in and started a quick counter-attack, which culminated in Matheus Braga’s high-arcing goal over Ben Berg’s head from 25 yards away.
The goal ended Penn’s shutout streak at just under 550 minutes, the second longest scoreless stretch in program history.
Five minutes later, Penn’s Thomas Brandt evened the score, as he took a deflected Christian Barreiro free kick and headed the ball over goalie Brendan Birmingham.
“I felt like we just needed to just take our chances — we had a couple of opportunities,” Brandt said. “Getting that one back was great, being level one-one. Unfortunately, we couldn’t put any others away.”
The teams traded scoring opportunities in the first period, but neither squad could get on the board. At one point Penn freshman Stephen Baker dribbled through three defenders, but his shot angled wide.
Hertzog — who was ultimately sent off for his second yellow card in the 86th minute — had two chances on a one-time strike and a set piece, but his shots went just over the crossbar.
Berg said that Penn’s scouting report had pegged Hertzog as a player who would take quick shots from any distance, which helped the defense stay prepared.
“We’ve got one of the best backlines and defensive wholes in the nation,” Berg said. “So I think we did a good job accounting for him.”
Although Fuller said the Quakers (11-3-0) didn’t prepare any differently than usual, Berg said the whole team was “looking forward” to taking revenge on Penn State and defending its home turf.
But after the disappointing loss, Fuller said that Penn must focus on bouncing back and defending its perfect 4-0 Ivy record in Saturday’s pivotal match against No. 13 Brown.
“This is one game. We’re not hitting the panic button,” Fuller said. “It’s a loss against a good team, and we feel like we certainly had our opportunities to put the game away. So now we go into the next game and try to do the same things.”
