Last night the women's lacrosse team defeated archrival Princeton, 10-5, to clinch at least a share of the Ivy League title as well as the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. First off, I want to apologize to anyone who was expecting to read live game updates here on The Buzz. For whatever reason my computer refused to connect to the internet at Franklin Field, so I couldn't post updates.
If you missed the game, you can read my recap and view the box score.
I also wrote a column, but due to time and space considerations I left some things out. So join me after the jump for a little W. Lax debriefing.
This win over Princeton was the team's third straight over the Tigers with the Ivy League title on the line. That's impressive in its own right considering 17 of the previous 18 matchups had gone to Princeton. But what makes the current winning streak all the more impressive is how Penn has beaten the Tigers. Yesterday Penn led 9-2 with less than five minutes to go before Princeton went on a meaningless 3-1 run. Last year it was 8-1 with 20 minutes to play before Princeton made it respectable with a 4-1 run. And then in 2007 it was 13-7 with under nine minutes to play before Princeton closed the game on a 3-1 stretch.
Simply put, Penn has been owning the Tigers. Even when they most recently lost it was a close 8-7 defeat in 2006. In all of the three wins Penn scored first, and even including the loss the Quakers led at the half.
And this has been the most significant thing about Penn's recent resurgence. The Red and Blue have come out strong in most games and never looked back, even with the pressure of facing a ranked team or an Ivy foe (or in the case of Princeton, both). In fact, in Penn's 55 wins since the start of the 2007 season, the team has only trailed at the half six times and it's been tied twice. (By comparison, in the four losses in that span Penn trailed at the half, so it's yet to choke away a lead.) Furthermore, outside of five one-goal wins and two two-goal wins, all of those wins have been by at least three.
With this level of dominance, at times it seems this team has a sense of destiny (at least in games against squads not from Evanston, Ill.) If the Quakers don't start strong, then they'll end strong; but somehow this team finds ways to go out and defeat their highly regarded opponents. So it didn't surprise me one bit when the Quakers were up 3-0 on the Tigers before a mere eight minutes had lapsed. Nor did the fact that they had one player (Erin Brennan) who had outscored Princeton until the 56:45 mark.
Of course players of any sport always believe, or even boast, that they can win any given match. But the women's lacrosse team is the only Penn squad that really can back it up. If the Quakers revenge last year's 10-8 loss to Stanford with a win at home May 2, then they will have beaten every team that they've played multiple times since 2005 at least once. Now that's impressive.
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