GOOOOOOOOOOLLL!

Actually, not even Andres Cantor could have added much more to the atmosphere of Saturday's Harvard-Brown men's soccer game than it already had.

All the crucial elements were there--Ivy League competition just never gets it this good. The game had a high level of play, touchline-to-touchline crowd support (samba beat included), more than its fair share of squint-through-the-darkness drama.

And, most important, an unbelievable pair of goals that now send the Cinderella Crimson to the NCAA Tournament Ball.

For this weekend, unlike the last, Harvard was able to squeeze goals out of sophomores Kevin Silva and T.J. Carella in extra time to secure a 2-0 Ivy League victory. And when Columbia lost 1-0 to Dartmouth yesterday, the unthinkable occurred: a 5-8-2 (but 5-1-1 Ivy) team found itself guaranteed a place in the NCAA's final 32.

"I'm not sure it hit me [after Saturday's game] what we'd accom- plished [in gaining at least a share of the Ivy League title]," a dazed captain Pepper Brill said yesterday. "But to now hear that Dartmouth won, it all hits you in a big blast that I can't really comprehend yet."

"Oh, my God, it's so incredible," said Silva, whose diagonal run and score past Brown keeper Tim Webb made "it" all possible. "It was the most perfect day, with the weather [70 degrees and clear with no wind] and the crowd, and I think I had the biggest smile on my face ever by the time it was all over."

"It was so much fun just to be out there," sophomore goalie Peter Albers said. "Everyone has played in 'big games' before, but never in my life had I played in something like this."

How big a game was it? Well, Brown (now at 10-3-1, 5-1-1 Ivy, and hoping for an at-large bid to the NCAAs) brought in some serious credentials: a defense conceding only 0.60 goals per game, a leading scorer in Darren Eales with almost twice as many points (32) as anyone on the Crimson and a tough, physical, intimidating style of play.

In fact, it was Eales that gave Brown the game's first golden scoring opportunity--Albers had to come up with a point-blank save less than five minutes in to keep the Bears off the scoreboard.

"I think I only got the last stud on my right foot on it," Albers said of a kick-save that would do Tripp Tracy proud. "Fortunately, I got just enough of it to turn it around the post [for a corner]."

It took the Crimson a long time to settle in that first half of regulation--in the early going, Harvard abandoned its short passing game, playing into the chippier Bears' hands.

"Everyone was intense and pumped up in the first half, but I think we were actually using a little too much energy," Brill said. "We were a bit nervous, and we were straying from our game plan too much--it wasn't our best performance."

But when the blood is pumping and the butterflies are churning, it is easier to work hard on defense than it is to create in midfield and on offense, and the first half began to take the shape of a series of turf wars; neither side willing to concede an inch of its half of the field.

That tempers were high was demonstrated when Silva collided with Ulsterman Gary Hughes in front of the scorer's table at midfield. Shoves were exchanged, curses flew, and eventually Head Coaches Trevor Adair (Brown) and Stephen Locker (Harvard) exchanged words from either side of the midfield stripe.

"[Brown has] a lot of foreign players who play physically--and with a lot on the line, the game gets that much more intense," Silva said. "In the heat of the moment, I guess you can understand why the coaches might be yelling at each other."