For the fourth year in a row, Penn will open its season against Duke.
The No. 13 Blue Devils (2-2), who defeated the Quakers (0-0) in two of the teams’ last three meetings, will make their first road trip of the year to Philadelphia Friday.
“We’ve had this game circled on our calendars since last season ended,” Penn senior captain Tim Schwalje said. “For us, there’s no better way to start our season than against a team like Duke that always makes a run in May.”
The Blue Devils’ season has been underway for two weeks, and their consecutive two-game weekends included two matchups against highly-ranked opponents. The Quakers, on the other hand, have yet to compete in a game this year. This discrepancy has both positive and negative implications, Penn head coach Mike Murphy noted.
“It’s a double-edged sword on both sides,” he said. “Duke has the advantage of having played four games and ironing out its early-season wrinkles. We have the advantage of having seen them play and scouting them a little bit, whereas they don’t have much of an idea of who we are.”
Last weekend, the Blue Devils were handed a 13-5 loss by No. 3 Notre Dame Saturday before rebounding in a 15-3 blowout win against Mercer Sunday. A slow start against the Fighting Irish doomed Duke, which lost to No. 11 Denver the week before, to a 0-2 record against ranked opponents this season.
“How much better we’ve been from when we played Denver to now… I’d like to think we’re much better,” Blue Devil junior Brendan Fowler said.
Fowler’s standout play was on display in Duke’s first two weekends of action. The midfielder boasts a 65.6 faceoff percentage and has scooped up 40 ground balls. Blue Devil head coach John Danowski has cautioned the team against relying too heavily on Fowler, noting the importance of helping him on the wing. Fowler credited sophomores Brian Dailey and Will Haus, junior Luke Duprey and senior Greg DeLuca for their strong wing play.
When Duke and Penn met last year, the Blue Devils took down the Quakers 12-8. Extra-man goals accounted for five of Penn’s tallies against Duke, which racked up a season-high 10 penalties in a messy game. The Quakers’ leading scorers from last season, John Conneely and Dan Savage, combined for six goals, but the duo graduated last year.
Penn will look to Schwalje and fellow senior Ryan Parietti, who scored 18 and 16 goals last season, respectively, to spearhead the offense. After relatively quiet freshmen and sophomore campaigns, the attackmen had breakout junior seasons.
The Quakers are hopeful that sophomores and juniors with unimpressive stat lines last year will exhibit an elevated level of play when they kick off their season Friday. Defensively, the Quakers know their first test—against the Blue Devils’ experienced starting attack line of juniors Jordan Wolf, Josh Dionne and Christian Walsh—will be a tough one.
“Duke has a great attack that has played together for a few years, but our defense has been watching film, working hard and getting ready to play,” Schwalje said. “Hopefully [the attack] is one of the strong points of [the Blue Devils] that we can stop.”
Wolf, who leads Duke in scoring with 13 goals, has three four-goal games this season. The attackman notched a hat trick against the Quakers in last season’s matchup.
“We hope he doesn’t score four goals against us,” Murphy said. “We will do our best to minimize his clean looks at the goal and his ability to create offense.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.