For the first month of the men’s lacrosse season, Penn was poised to make a surprising run at an Ivy League title.

Unfortunately for the Quakers, No. 20 Harvard was first on the conference bill.

The Crimson (3-2, 1-0 Ivy) battled back from an early deficit to send Penn (6-1, 0-1 Ivy), ranked No. 14 at the time, to its first loss of the season by a score of 13-8 on March 25 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

Harvard’s success this year has been predicated on fast starts, but a 3-1 Quaker lead less than ten minutes into the opening quarter had the Crimson playing from behind. Despite the early setback, it was a steady stream of first quarter shots that knotted things up at three after the first fifteen minutes.

“We worked on better shot selection,” Harvard coach Scott Andersen said. “Taking better shots—that was the big thing.”

Better shots, and more shots. Whereas Penn needed just four looks to net three first quarter goals, the Crimson had 14 shots in the opening frame. It was the efficient play of the Quakers that had them as one of just three undefeated teams entering the weekend. Records aside, the margin of victory in the Harvard-Penn matchup is unusually small—the previous ten contests between the two teams had been decided by no more than three goals.

“We always play Penn close, and it’s a battle every time,” said co-captain Jake Samuelson, who scored the Crimson’s first goal of the afternoon. “Even though they were undefeated, after watching them on film, we knew they were a beatable team.”

Following the opening period, Harvard used the second to gain a lead that it wouldn’t relinquish. After the first seven and a half minutes of the quarter yielded no scores, a Quaker goal with 7:17 to go was followed by four straight Crimson scores. Two of them came from senior Sean Kane, who finished the day with his first hat trick of the season. The three-goal margin at halftime was the closest Penn got the rest of the afternoon.

“We had lots of possessions in the second quarter, and we won a lot of faceoffs,” Andersen said. “We definitely shot the ball better, too.”

Harvard clamped down on the defensive end in the third quarter, holding the Quakers scoreless during the stretch. It was just the third time all season that the Crimson has held an opponent without a goal for an entire quarter—each of the previous two occurred in Harvard wins as well. Unlike the previous two, however, this one counts towards the Ivy standings—and a possible shot at the NCAA tournament down the line.

“This is our new season,” Samuelson. “This is the first step towards bigger things, and we feel pretty good.”

Harvard won the scoring battle in the fourth as well, but things were much more interesting. Kane scored the third of his three goals, while sophomore and freshman midfielders Zach Widbin and Max Motschwiller chipped in scores. Junior midfielder Evan Calvert increased his team lead in points scored with two goals in the fourth, but allowing Penn to hang around—the Quakers had four goals of their own in the period—served as evidence that there is still room for improvement.

“Some of our transition play was a little sloppy,” Andersen said. “There were things we could have done better.”

According to Samuelson, there weren’t many.

“It wasn’t the best we could play, but it was pretty close,” Samuelson said. “We’re riding pretty high after this win.”

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.