Women’s Soccer: Penn Ivy League champs, St. Joseph’s in Atlantic 10 semifinal

Penn’s dominant 2018 campaign continued with a 2-0 shutout of Brown on Sunday that clinched at least a share of the Ivy League title for the Quakers.

The shutout was the team’s 12th of the season in 15 matches and stretched the team’s unbeaten streak to 12, dating way back to their third game of the season in August.

The championship, which they can win outright with a win or draw against Princeton on Saturday and lock up an NCAA Tournament auto-bid, is the program’s first since 2010.

Goalkeeper Kitty Qu made a pair of saves in the match to record her ninth solo clean sheet of the season and 19th of her career. Sasha Stephens had her fourth of the season and Mia Shenk scored her first of the year both in the second half while Allie Trzaska (Yardley, Pa.) picked up her team-leading seventh assist and Paige Howard her third assist of the year.

Though the team is now 13-1-1, one of only seven Division 1 programs in the country with one loss or fewer and leads the nation in goals against average (only 4 goals conceded in 1,389 minutes), the Quakers are still only ranked 58th in the RPI.

While the Ivy League doesn’t have a postseason tournament, three other local programs qualified for the postseason in their respective conferences.

Drexel saw their season end in the Colonial Athletic Association quarterfinals with a 3-2 overtime loss to the College of Charleston. The Dragons overcame a two-goal deficit in the second half with goals from Morgan Rees (Ardmore, Pa.) and Kiera Hennessy only to surrender a golden goal in the 105th minute.

Their season ended with a 7-7-5 overall record and 4-4-1 mark in conference play.

Temple qualified for the American Athletic Conference quarterfinals despite dropping their final two conference matches by 1-0 score lines to Memphis and UConn and finishing the season with a 3-5-1 record in conference play (7-10-1 overall). The Owls face UCF at 4:30 p.m. today in Tampa.

St. Joseph’s is one win away from going to the Atlantic 10 Championship after beating Fordham for the second time in nine days. Taylor Ryan and Morgan Bower scored on each side of halftime and Grace Bendon made a pair of saves to lead the Hawks to the 2-0 win and set up a semifinal with VCU on Friday afternoon in Dayton. The Hawks, now 14-4-2 overall and 8-2-0 in Atlantic 10 play, beat VCU 2-0 on October 7th. Top-seeded Saint Louis plays George Mason in the other semifinal on Friday.

Villanova finished their season with their most wins (9) since 2009 but saw their season end at home last Thursday with a 2-1 loss to Butler. After falling behind 2-0 in the 56th minute, Kristin Barbour cut the lead in half three minutes later with her first of the year but the Wildcats fell for the fifth straight time, all in conference play, to end the season at 9-9-0.