The Harvard women's water polo team had a scheduled engagement with Rhode Island University last night.

One small detail impeded the match, however.

The team from Rhode Island failed to show up at Blodgett Pool by eight o'clock. In fact, they failed to show up at all.

"They have a pretty wild and notorious bunch up there," said Joe Colbert, who plays for Rhode Island's men's team and made the trip to Cambridge last night to be the game's official scorer. "The coach still doesn't know why they didn't make it."

According to Harvard coach Chris Hafferty, many of the women on the Rhode Island team didn't know they had a game last night.

Even though the Harvard team missed an opportunity to hone its skills before this weekend's tournament at Brown, Hafferty said the team should do well at the tournament and throughout the year. He hopes the team will be among the top 10 in the nation by the end of the national tournament which will be played at Harvard May 2-4.

Part of the team's strength should come from a recent trip to Colorado Springs which nine of the players took over spring break to play with the women's junior national team.

"That was really hard water polo we played over in Colorado. I think we'll be better this year because of it," said junior Elisabeth Micheli.

The team will scrimmage MIT tonight, already having defeated the Engineers twice this season. The aquawomen next see home action in 10 days when they host the annual Harvard Tournament.

The team may not get to play all of its scheduled games then either, however. The University of Rhode Island is scheduled to be one of the participants then, too.