M. Lax handcuffs Harvard's offense

(Penn - 7, Harvard - 5)

After losing a sloppy game at Yale last week, the Penn men's lacrosse team secured a 7-5 victory over No. 20 Harvard on Saturday with a dominating defensive performance.

The defense came through during all of the clutch moments -- Harvard scored only one goal during its eight man-up opportunities.

"That's phenomenal," Penn junior Alex Kopicki said. "I'm sure that Harvard is going to practice its man-up next week a lot."

At the beginning of the fourth quarter, Kopicki received a three-minute unreleasable penalty because of an illegal stick. Just two minutes later, Harvard took a two-man advantage because of a game misconduct called on Penn coach Matt Hogan for arguing with the officials.

"I made a bad decision there and got after the officials and got foul," Hogan said. "We talked about dealing with adversity. We put ourselves in a position of being a man down for three minutes and the guys dealt with that adversity.

"The defense did a great job with winning the fourth quarter and dealing with that adversity."

During the advantage, Harvard's Jay Wich received a pass from James Christian with 12:58 remaining in the fourth quarter to record the Crimson's only man-up goal of the game.

"Any time you have a three-minute unreleasable penalty, your heart kind of stops, even for a second," Kopicki said. "Hats off to [the defense]. They were the ones that won the game for us."

Junior goalie Ryan Kelly anchored the defense with 10 saves. Kelly began his stellar display with a point-blank save on Harvard's Derek Nowak with 50 seconds remaining in the first half, keeping the Penn lead intact at 5-2.

"Ryan Kelly is important to everything we do," Penn coach Matt Hogan said. "We're playing good defense some days, and sometimes we're not and we're getting good goalie play. Ryan's been great every day.

"He's a good leader and he's been very good for us."

Nowak did not take the missed two-foot opportunity well -- after Kelly's save, the Harvard senior viciously attacked an unexpecting chair on the Crimson sideline.

Kelly held the 7-5 Penn lead with a similar point-blank save, this time on Harvard's Doug Kools, with 24 seconds remaining in the game.

But despite Kelly's late-game heroics, Harvard made a late run at the Quakers' lead in the fourth quarter.

After Penn entered the second half with a 5-2 lead, Mike Iannacone further padded the Quakers' lead with his second of three goals during the game.

But with 3:22 left in the third quarter, Harvard's Michael Baly began what would be a 3-0 Crimson run to narrow the Penn lead to one.

"We weren't nervous at all," Iannacone said. "We knew what we had to do. Our man down and our goalie saved the day today."

Iannacone finished his hat-trick performance with an unassisted side-armed rocket on the right side of the field.

Kopicki also contributed three points to the Penn win, scoring one goal and assisting two.

The win "is huge for our confidence because we know that we have a whole week of practice next week before another big Ivy game," Kopicki said. "Cornell's coming in next week, and they're No. 12 right now.

"We'd like to get back on track like today before going into next week."

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