Women’s Soccer: Penn keeps rolling, Saint Joe’s and Drexel into postseason

Penn surrendered their first goal in more than a month, but stretched their unbeaten streak to 11 with a pair of wins over the past week, edging Yale 2-1 and blowing out Delaware State 6-0.

Still the stingiest defense in the nation, the Quakers have conceded only four times in 14 matches and 1,299 minutes and boast a 4-0-1 record in the Ivy League and a 12-1-1 overall record.

Emily Sands (West Chester, Pa.) scored both goals in the win over Yale, in the 49th and 81st minutes to increase her team lead in goals to eight and five different Quakers found the back of the net in the win over Delaware State — Abbey Duncan had a brace and Abby Reed, Paige Howard, Emma Loving and Cameron Keating all scored. Senior Kiera Towell made her first start of the season in goal and made one save to record the clean sheet.

As a team, the Quakers have recorded 11 shutouts in 14 matches this season. They finish the regular season with two key conference games against Brown on Saturday at home and at Princeton next Saturday.

In other local Division 1 women’s soccer action, Saint Joseph’s and Drexel both booked spots in their conference tournaments while La Salle’s season came to a disappointing end with two more losses to George Mason and VCU. After starting the season with only one loss in their first eight games, the Explorers had only two wins in their last nine games to finish 8-8-1 overall and 3-7-0 in conference play.

The Hawks (13-4-2 and 8-2-0 in A10) finished third in the conference after finishing the season with six straight conference wins and will host Fordham in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic 10 Championship on Saturday night at 7 p.m.

Drexel earned the fifth seed in the Colonial Athletic Association Championship after posting back-to-back shutout wins over Northeastern and Elon and will face the College of Charleston in the quarterfinals on Friday at 1 p.m. at James Madison.

Villanova and Temple both need to win their regular season finales on Thursday and get help to make the postseason.

The Wildcats play Butler at 3 p.m. on Thursday at home while the Owls host UConn at 3:30 p.m.

Temple split their two conference games last week, beating Temple 1-0 on Natalie Druehl’s 10th minute goal and losing to Memphis 1-0 at home on a goal in the second minute. They are two points behind SMU for fourth place, which gets the final postseason tournament berth.

Villanova extended their conference losing streak to four games with a 3-2 overtime loss at St. John’s and a 1-0 loss at DePaul. They led 2-0 against St. John’s after Shaey Seyffart opened the scoring in the 17th minute and Chloe O’Neill doubled the lead with her fifth of the season.

Nova is in eight place, but only two points behind Providence and DePaul, which are tied for fifth place and one point behind Creighton in sixth place. Six teams make the postseason in the Big East.