Ranked sixth in the nation and first in New England, Harvard's soccer team guns for its third victory of the season as it opens defense of the Ivy League title against Columbia at 11 a.m. today on the Business School Field.
"They're not one of the strongest teams in the Ivies but they have their fair share of talented foreign players," Harvard coach Bruce Munro said.
Indeed, the Lions, who are classified as a "rebuilding team" this season by most experts, do have more than their share of foreign players.
The hero of last Saturday's Columbia 3-2 victory over Princeton was a 5 ft. 6 in., 120 pound right inside named Pete Vasudhara. He recorded the first "hat trick" of the Ivy league season by netting two unassisted goals before scoring the winner in the fourth period against the Tigers.
Assisting on Vasudhara's third goal was another member of Coach Jim Rein's foreign corps, Iruba Chatupronchareon.
The key to the Lion's success this year could be the performance of transfer student Francis N'Jie, who finds himself in the difficult position of trying to replace graduated All-American halfback Len Renery.
Along with Renery, Rein lost six other starters from the best Lion team in recent years, but he appears to still possess enough talent to post a winning records.
Entering today's match, Harvard will still be looking to put-together two halfs of consistent offensive and defensive soccer equal to or surpassing its second half performance against Amherst last Wednesday.
So far this season the concern in achieving this consistency stems from a sputtering offense but in the second half of the Amherst game the Crimson attack finally opened up.
The assault had more distribution to the wings than in the past and the play consistently crossed back and forth across the field with crisp, well placed passes that left Amherst frustrated.
The defense in the second half denied the Lord Jeffs' offense a single scoring threat in the same impenetrable fashion displayed in the MIT game.
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