M. Lax unfazed by pair of tests

After a three-game skid, the men's lacrosse team is in need of serious redemption.

It gets the chance to turn its season around when it travels to New England, taking on Harvard tomorrow and Division I newcomer Bryant Sunday afternoon.

For now, the Quakers (1-3, 0-1 Ivy) are focusing on the No. 16 Crimson (3-1), as their second Ivy game is pivotal after Saturday's overtime loss to Yale. But the team is confident it can hang with the best in its conference, as long as it stays focused for the entire contest.

"On paper, we're a better team than Harvard and everyone here knows it," senior midfielder Garvey Heiderman said. "We just got to put 60 minutes together, and we're very confident we can come out with a win."

The Penn attack will be tested, however, as Harvard allows only six goals a game and is especially stingy in penalty-kill situations, allowing only a single goal in ten opportunities this year. It will be crucial to keep up the momentum from last weekend's 13-goal output against Yale.

On the other end, the Red and Blue defense - shaky so far this season - will be tested by attackmen Jeff Cohen and Dean Gibbons, who is tied for the league lead with three goals per game. Last week, Cohen netted five of the Crimson's 18 goals as they trumped Hartford.

"We need to play much better defensively," Penn coach Brian Voelker said. "We gotta step up and stop making big-time mistakes on the defensive end."

After that game, the Quakers have short rest, as they travel to Smithfield, R.I., to take on Bryant (4-4) the next day. While the Bulldogs are in their inaugural D-I season, they are not your average newcomer.

Their coach, Mike Pressler, gained notoriety three years ago when he was the head coach at Duke and three players were accused of raping an exotic dancer at a team party. He resigned, and that fall signed on with Bryant, then a D-II program.

However, he led the Bulldogs to the D-II Final Four in 2007 and this year has battled some of the top teams in the nation, including No. 1 Virginia and No. 10 Maryland.

Scheduling connections are not the only thing Pressler has brought to the program. The team received an enormous boost in August when former Blue Devils All-American Zack Greer followed his coach and transferred to Bryant after the NCAA awarded him and 32 teammates an extra year of eligibility to make up for the 2006 season that was canceled due to the criminal accusations.

The fifth-year senior's credentials speaks for themselves, as Greer is a three-time All-American, the 2008 Turnbull Award winner as the nation's top attackman and the NCAA's all-time leader in career goals. And he has had no problem transitioning to Bryant and his new midfield position, netting 21 goals this year to go along with 12 assists.

But Greer is not alone on the attack, as the Bulldogs average nearly 11 goals per game and have scored at least 20 points twice this season. Senior attackmen Kevin Hoagland and Bryan Kaufmann have netted 14 goals apiece.

So the Quakers likely have a tiring weekend ahead of them, but they know that it is grit and determination that could will them to a .500 record by weekend's end.

"The reason we beat Drexel wasn't a lot of X and O stuff, it was just effort and ground balls and hustle and a lot of those cliche things," Voelker said. "Hopefully our guys will be scratching and clawing and doing everything they can to get the win" this weekend.

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