M. Lax Online Extra: Shockwaves of Dartmouth win may be felt for a long time

With 51 seconds left in the third quarter of Friday's game, Ari Sussman scored a goal for Dartmouth, putting Penn in a 7-3 hole with just one quarter to play.

I was covering the game for the DP, and wrote in my notepad ":51, Sussman. Last nail in the coffin?"

Shows how much I know. Fifteen minutes later, all of my notes were in the garbage, and the Quakers were celebrating their 8-7 comeback victory over the Big Green.

If Penn can salvage what has been a somewhat disappointing season so far, it will likely be this moment that the team traces it back to. And while a League championship may already be beyond reach, it could pave the way for a successful season next year.

The Quakers started out the 2007 campaign well enough, with three straight wins, but then fell into a 1-4 funk, culminating in a 20-5 loss to first-place Cornell. The win against Dartmouth brought Penn back to .500 in the Ivy League, at 2-2.

With the Big Red at 3-0 Ivy, the Quakers will require significant help from Cornell's remaining opponents to even have a chance. But a loss to Dartmouth would have put an Ivy title run all but out of reach. If anything, the comeback kept the team's hopes alive.

More than that, though, the team needed this win just to regain the momentum it had lost over the past few weeks. After Friday's win, senior captain David Cornbrooks explained why this victory was so important: "I said earlier this week that we needed this game as a turnaround. Now we have four games left, and I think it's a huge confidence builder."

Head coach Brian Voelker was almost in disbelief at the comeback his team had just staged. "It's a gigantic, gigantic win for us."

Those four games will by no means be easy, especially tomorrow's contest against Princeton. But if the Quakers can take that confidence and parlay it into a win over the Tigers, it might mean better things to come.

Penn hasn't beaten Princeton in the last 17 tries, and finally ending that streak could signify that this youth-laden team has come into their own.

"We know we're capable of playing like we were playing that last seven minutes," says Voelker.

And the Quakers are confident that, if they're on their game, they can do it.

"They're definitely beatable this year," says sophomore attacker Craig Andrzejewski.

So if everything that the players say about Friday's game being a turnaround is true, those seven minutes could mean a long-awaited win and maybe a top-caliber team next year.

And while a title run this year may already be very close to unattainable, if there's one thing this team has proven, it's that no comeback is out of reach.

Matt Conrad is a senior physics major from Manalapan, N.J., and is former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is mlconrad@sas.upenn.edu.

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