Penn women’s lacrosse has a knack for making big games look easy. It did that on Saturday when they handily took down Dartmouth, 17-6.

Everything in the early going truly pointed to a Penn men’s lacrosse victory, but Brown’s resiliency proved too much to handle, resulting in an 11-8 loss. The Quakers (4-5, 1-3 Ivy) are now on the brink of Ivy League Tournament elimination, as they once again failed to play the complete 60 minutes of lacrosse. 

After falling just short of pulling off a seven-goal comeback against Ivy rival Yale, the Penn men’s lacrosse team will face another tough test this weekend against conference foe and national semifinalist Brown on Saturday.

For Penn, this contest, and the four to follow it, are must-wins for the side seeking a share of the Ancient Eight title as well as home-field advantage come the NCAA Tournament.

With women's lacrosse ranked in the top 10 nationally, track and field seeing school records fall left and right, baseball having won ten of its last 11 games and more, the season has seen some supreme successes already — but only one athlete can stand out as the best. Our sports editors take to the roundtable to debate: Who is the Penn Athletics spring season MVP so far?

The tides began to turn when Condon strung together a run of hat tricks. In her last 12 games of 2016, the quick-shooting midfielder had nine performances with three or more goals. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is — Condon’s play progressed from a pretty good early season to an elite performance down the stretch. When all was said and done, her 41 goals that year were the sixth-most in program history.

The first thing one notices about Kevin Gayhardt is his height. At 6-foot-6 inches, the men's lacrosse senior defenseman towers above his own teammates and makes the average observer wonder if lacrosse is the right sport for him. But now? He’s the heart and soul of the defense.

They made it to the final stretch — and they’re still standing. In the last game in a long series of tough matches against ranked non-conference teams, No. 11 Penn women’s lacrosse pulled off a comeback to remember at No. 16 Northwestern.

Sometimes it’s not all about how you finish. Penn men’s lacrosse is proof of that, losing to Yale 14-12 despite scoring six goals in the game’s final eight minutes.

One goal. That was the margin of defeat for Penn men’s lacrosse in both of their games against Yale in 2016, including an 11-10 overtime defeat in their first meeting of the season in New Haven. On Saturday, the Quakers (4-3, 1-1 Ivy) will have an opportunity to avenge those losses.

Sometimes you need a change of scenery. For Penn women’s lacrosse, the team will be trading the City of Brotherly Love for the Windy City to take on a strong Northwestern side this weekend.

“Preparing Boys for Life.” That is the motto of The Haverford School, an elite preparatory day school that has funneled top-end lacrosse players to Penn and across the country. 

With a performance that saw him tie a career-high in points in Penn's 10-9 victory over Cornell, this week's Penn Athletics Weekend MVP goes to men's lacrosse's sophomore Simon Mathias. The Quakers (4-3, 1-1 Ivy) needed a win this weekend after dropping their Ivy opener to Princeton last weekend, and this one was certainly well fought.

The first win is always the hardest. For Penn women’s lacrosse, securing its first victory in the Ancient Eight on Saturday over Brown means it is ready for the title chase.

It may not have been pretty, but Penn men’s lacrosse needed a win and somehow found one in Ithaca against Cornell.

It takes a talented program to make trouble for the country’s best team. For eleventh ranked Penn women’s lacrosse, that was the story on Wednesday when they traveled to Maryland and fell 11-7.

Cornell will welcome the Quakers to Ithaca for both teams’ second Ivy League matchup of the season. The Red and Blue (3-3, 0-1 Ivy) will look to regroup after two straight losses derailed what was a promising start to the 2017 campaign.