Last chance for W. Lax to upset

When Penn women's lacrosse coach Karin Brower said, "It's going to be an uphill battle from here," after her team defeated Rutgers a week ago, she wasn't kidding. No. 10 Dartmouth handed the Quakers a 14-4 loss last Friday, snapping Penn's four-game winning streak. The loss left the Red and Blue still searching for their first win against a top-20 team this season. Barring a move in the standings by Brown, Temple or American -- three of the four remaining teams on the Quakers' schedule -- this will be Penn's last chance to take down a top-ranked team. Tonight at 7 p.m., the Quakers (6-6, 2-3 Ivy League) will take on perennial Ivy powerhouse and national No. 3 Princeton (10-1, 4-0) on Franklin Field. The Tigers, who haven't lost since March 11, are riding a nine-game winning streak and are a perfect 5-0 on the road. During the five-week span, Princeton has recorded five wins against top 20 teams, including victories over No. 4 Duke, No. 7 Yale and No. 9 Virginia. Against Ivy League teams, the Tigers have achieved their 4-0 record by decimating opponents by an average of 7.25 goals per game. And the team from Old Nassau has a little extra incentive to keep its perfect Ivy mark. A win tonight over the Quakers and a win against Dartmouth on Saturday would guarantee the Tigers the 2001 Ivy League title, unseating Dartmouth from the top spot for the first time since 1996. The Quakers, too, have incentive to play well. "It's a good opportunity for us to finish the highest we have in a really long time in the Ivy League," Penn senior defender Amy Weinstein said of her team, which hasn't won three league games in a season since 1996. The first step for the Quakers tonight will be shutting down Princeton's high-octane offense. "Everyone on their team is capable of putting up big numbers," Weinstein said. "So all of us just need to be really up for the game and not take anything too lightly." The Tigers offense, which has yet to score less than nine goals in any game this season, is led by two juniors -- Lauren Simone and Kim Smith. Simone, a second-team all-American and first-team regional all-American during her sophomore campaign, was tied for first on her team in points with 57 last season. A native of Delran, N.J., Simone is especially dangerous in one-on-one situations and will make the Quakers pay -- in the same way that Dartmouth attackers did -- if they fail to double early. "We did a really good job [against Dartmouth] of being aware of where we needed to be," Weinstein said. "The problem was we didn't help out and get to the doubles early enough." Throughout the entire season, failure to double in the midfield has been one of Penn's biggest technical problems. "Technically, the biggest thing we need to focus on is leaving for those doubles earlier on and stopping those challenges before they get too close to the goal," Weinstein said. Smith -- the other half of Princeton's dynamic duo -- also tallied 57 points last season. The two-time Ivy League Player of the Week has been on fire lately, scoring 15 goals in her last four games. But if the Quakers can find the intensity and tactical flawlessness that they had during their four-game winning streak, perhaps tonight's spectators -- and the rest of the lacrosse world -- will be in for a surprise. "If we win [against Princeton], we're going to rock the lacrosse world," Christy Bennett said.

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