"We played with an edge against Princeton, and against Penn, we didn't," goalie Bernie Susskind '13 said. "They had a great defense and a great goalie. We just couldn't put it together."
The Big Green's loss means they will not play in the Ivy League tournament.
The first quarter was the team's best in the game. They outshot the Quakers (7-4, 3-3 Ivy) 9-5 and ended the quarter with a 1-0 lead over their ranked opponents. With just over seven minutes left in the frame, Penn took a penalty, giving Dartmouth their first man-up opportunity of the game. Forty seconds into the one-minute penalty, attacker Adam Fishman '15 found midfielder KC Beard '16. Beard fired and beat the Penn keeper for the Big Green's only lead of the day.
Dartmouth could not build on their solid first quarter, as the Quakers scored the next six goals. Both the second and third quarters were 3-0 victories for the team from Philadelphia. In the middle quarters, the Quakers outshot the Big Green 24-10. In the second quarter, the Big Green was only 5-8 on clears. These turnovers contributed to its five in the frame and cost the Big Green offensive opportunities.
"I don't think that transition is our strong point," co-captain Pat Flynn '13 said. "We like to slow the game down. We let them play their game and we didn't play ours."
Going into the fourth, the score stood at 6-1 Penn. With just over eight minutes remaining in the game, the Big Green attempted to jump-start a comeback with a goal from Fishman. They could not build on this, however, as the Quakers scored five goals in the final seven minutes to push the final score to 11-2.
"Their defense and goalie played really well," co-captain Chris Costabile '13 said. "Once the game started getting out of hand, we had to start pushing in transition and that backfired on us, but we had no other choice."
The Quakers took advantage of 17 Big Green turnovers, which they turned into multiple fast-break goals. They exploited holes and missed slides in the Big Green defense and capitalized on numerous outside shots.
The Dartmouth men forced 17 turnovers of their own, but were unable to convert them into offense.
"They transitioned really well and took advantage of those opportunities," Susskind said. "We just couldn't finish on some plays and it just didn't go our way."
The Big Green struggled once again from the face-off, losing 10 of 16 draws. The Dartmouth men were 21-25 on clears.
Despite 14 saves from Susskind, the Big Green could not overcome the 40-shot barrage from the Quakers. Dartmouth tallied 30 shots in the loss.
"We didn't shoot well at all," Costabile said. "We hit a couple of posts, and their goalie played well."
The Big Green lost the ground ball battle 31-24. Both teams scored once with the man advantage.
With the playoffs out of the picture, the team travels to Worcester, Mass., to take on the College of the Holy Cross in their final non-conference tilt of the season next Saturday, where they will look to build momentum going into their final game against Brown University.
"We don't have a chance to get into the Ivy League tournament now, so hopefully we can finish strong with a couple of wins," Costabile said.
