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- "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." Well into the second half, though, neither side looked likely to dent the other's netting. In the game's 63rd minute, just-into-the-game Brown substitute Jay Ball fired a loaded 20-yarder that Albers could only pound into the ground, although the Harvard sophomore was able to cover the grenade before it could do any significant damage. Fortified by the "ole, ole-ole-ole!" chants of the crowd and some good midfield work by sophomore Will Kohler, Harvard surged back into high gear late in the game. It was actually against the late run of play that Brown had the best chances to end the game on 90 minutes: using Hughes as a target man, the Bears continued to chip crosses into the Harvard box, but Albers expertly claimed several of them. "Peter was on fire, just outstanding out there," Silva said. "He kept us in the game there--the team feels so comfortable with him at the back." On to overtime, and Locker's calming words began to hit home. "We knew we could afford to stay calm in the first 15 minutes only," Kohler said. "If we hadn't scored by then would we have started pressing myself and [Carella] forward." But with darkness descending over the field--2:30 p.m. is just too late to start a game on an unlit field after the clocks are turned back in New England--Harvard stepped up its level of play the extra notch it needed to finally beat Webb. Harvard outshot Brown 5-0 in the extra 30 minutes, and its well-deserved, season-saving first goal was scored when freshman Toure McCluskey's through-ball got to Silva in minute number 98. "It was all Toure's work," said Silva, who collected McCluskey's pass in space and one-touched it past the late-rushing Webb. "It was a pretty basic finish--I guess I really didn't have much time to get nervous, because it all happened so fast." After Silva's Brazilian outburst of celebration--high-stepping it over to the near corner as the Harvard bench erupted in astonished excitement, the crowd barely had time to calm itself down before it again had reason to go crazy. From the kickoff that started the second overtime, Kohler drove straight down the field and won a free kick about 30 yards out from goal. What happened next was deception in its highest form, aided, perhaps, by the gathering dusk. As the right-footed Carella settled behind the ball, he noticed that the Brown wall failed to fully cover the left side of the goal. He approached the ball normally, but striking it with the inside of his right foot he hit a flat, knuckling shot perfectly into the upper left corner of the goal. Webb never moved, and Harvard's lead was secured. "Talking to him after the game, I'm pretty sure that's what he meant to do," Kohler said. (Carella couldn't be reached for comment--midterm studying doesn't stop for Ivy League titles.) "I don't know how he did it, but I know one thing--I've never seen him run so fast as he did after he scored it." Carella's response to his goal at 105:39 was to dive headlong into the three-deep crowd on the far touch-line, and the Crimson bench jumped into the air again. And Harvard's dominance continued almost until the final whistle--Silva nearly garnered a third Crimson goal in the 113th minute. He broke in alone on Webb only to shoot wide, by which time only the dim-white ball and the mile-wide smiles of the Crimson could be seen in the pitch-blackness. "Thank God we had the lead by then," Kohler said. "It was pretty useless trying to do anything in the dark." At the final whistle, the response of both bench and crowd was to storm the field, and even though the strongest source of light by game's end was the "0:00" on the scoreboard clock, an indelible image had been emblazoned into the Harvard record books. "That was our biggest crowd in the four years I've been here," Brill said. "It helps you more than you can imagine, hazing the other team and lifting our spirits so much, and we appreciate all the support we've been getting this year."
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