Mangini’s four goals boost Quakers in win over Bulldogs

Sophomore midfield Shannon Mangini is coming off of a hamstring injury, but given her performance against Yale on Saturday, you would never know.

“I was kind of tentative when I was playing, not to hurt that more,” she said. “And I just think I’ve gained more confidence and that’s really helped me to just play that game that I can play.”

And due in large part to Mangini’s confidence — and her four-goal performance, doubling the number of her collegiate career goals— the Penn women’s lacrosse team advanced its Ivy record to 2-0 with a 12-6 win over Yale.

The Quakers’ (4-1, 2-0 Ivy) slow-break offense was effective against the Bulldogs (2-3, 0-2), as seven of the team’s 12 goals were unassisted. No. 9 Penn has practiced this slow-break strategy, looking for good cutters or challenge opportunities instead of moving into a settled offense.

“We’ve been practicing it a lot in practice to just kind of get the mentality, to just kind of push the tempo a little bit and we did do that [Saturday], which was nice,” coach Karin Brower Corbett said.

The Quakers, who had outdrawn their opponents, 59-47, entering into the game, were split evenly with Yale in terms of draw controls with 10 apiece. As a result, a number of Penn players contributed to the draw control effort, including junior Meredith Cain and freshman Taylor Foussadier, who won three draws each.

“We just have people who can draw to herself and get it, or if the ball’s on the ground, we have people that are good at getting after those ground balls,” Mangini said. “We have so many people who can do it.”

Although the Quakers scored the first goal, the Bulldogs set the tone right off the first draw. Yale grabbed possession at the start of the game and took eight minutes off the clock before Penn goalkeeper and senior co-captain Emily Leitner made the first of her five saves.

“I wish we had had the ball a little more and had been cleaner,” Corbett said.

Yale midfield Cathryn Avallone netted three goals against the Quakers’ defense, but Penn contained the Bulldogs’ other strong attackers, Caroline Crow and Devon Rhodes, to just one goal combined.

“I think we did okay defensively,” Corbett said. “I think we took a couple of risks to double team and came up [with] a couple goals on that, but I was glad to see that people could double some, which was good.”

Although the Quakers outshot their opponent by a margin of 25-16, Corbett wasn’t pleased with the team’s 11 turnovers, many of which were unforced. And with difficult matchups against No. 15 Georgetown and Cornell, who is also 2-0 in the Ancient Eight, on the schedule for this week, she feels her team’s possessions need to be improved.

“We ended up scoring when we needed to. I think that, like I said, we were pretty sloppy,” Corbett said. “We weren’t as clean or composed as I would have liked to have been against them, but again, very happy with our second Ivy win.

“We have to play better than we did this weekend to compete with those two programs.”

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