Shell-shocked Penn downs Lions

After the women’s lacrosse team got outplayed in a 12-6 loss to No. 2 Maryland Friday, the team once again found itself down 4-2 with 14:08 left in the first half against a Columbia team that had never beaten the Red and Blue.

So would the No. 4 Quakers follow up the Maryland loss with an even more disappointing Lions upset?

The Penn defense certainly did not plan to let that happen.

Penn clamped down on the Lions’ offense for the last 45 minutes of the game, allowing zero goals in a 28:05 span while the Quakers offense ran up the score. The Red and Blue would allow the Lions just three more goals en route to a 19-7 victory yesterday at Franklin Field.

The Quakers’ 19 goals were a season high, and while the Lions were shut out, Penn scored 12 goals. With two goals, senior midfield Ali DeLuca broke a 27-year record and became the all-time leading goal scorer in Penn history with 130 career goals, including 30 on the year.

“I didn’t know until this season [started] that I was close. So I was kind of surprised,” DeLuca said. “It’s a good feeling.”

But while the Quakers (9-2, 4-0 Ivy) are now a half game up on second-place Dartmouth in the Ivy League, the team did lose some of its national prestige after the drubbing to the Terrapins (12-0), who have now won 40-straight regular season games.

Though the score was close in the first half — Penn took an early 1-0 lead, then tied it up 3-3 with 5:11 left in the first half — the Quakers found themselves down 5-3 at the break and never got any closer.

Maryland put the game away due to an 8-2 run that spanned from 4:40 left in the first half until just over eight minutes left in the game.

Draw controls again played a crucial part in the Terrapins’ spurt. Overall, Maryland had 14 draws to Penn’s six, including nine out of 12 during the 8-2 stretch.

Even when Penn did earn possession, it failed to capitalize, earning just 13 total shots.

“On attack, we didn’t move the ball well,” Penn coach Karin Brower Corbett said. “If you can’t catch and throw, you won’t win.”

Against Columbia it was the defense that originally plagued the Quakers. The team fouled often, leading to three Columbia goals on free-position shots early in the contest.

That caused Corbett to call a timeout halfway through the first period, as well as to pull senior goalkeeper Emily Szelest, who according to Corbett “wasn’t seeing the ball well.” (Szelest returned four minutes later.)

But after those two strategic moves, the Quakers dominated the draw control, winning 16 out of the last 22 draws, and the offense pounded Columbia for 16 goals.

Five players had at least four points, freshman Meredith Cain scored her first career goal and senior defense Barb Seaman scored her first goal since February 2009. Overall, the team had 12 assists on 19 goals, a big difference from the zero assists Friday.

“It was nice to have multiple threats on offense,” DeLuca said. “It was a huge team effort.”

With undefeated, five-time defending NCAA champion No. 1 Northwestern visiting Friday, senior defense Kaileigh Wright thinks the squad needs to maintain the positive energy it demonstrated in the win.

“There was just a lighthearted mood [yesterday] that we didn’t have Friday,” she said.

“That’s the kind of fun intensity that we want to bring against Northwestern. If you’re too intense about it, it can backfire.”

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