"We came out hard in the second half and took the game," Porter said. "It was some of our best lacrosse of the season."

"They just seemed to fall apart," Rice said of the Catamounts. "We seemed to find holes easy and--bam--it was over."

Looking its first loss of the season in the face, Vermont battled hard in the final minutes, but the Crimson matched them evenly--the teams then traded goals until the final whistle blew, signifying Harvard's third and most reassuring win of the season.

"It was a relief to win," Porter said. "Our confidence had been down a bit, but after yesterday, I think we are a very confident team. We've showed that we can play well--and we know we can even play better than that."

The Crimson will need every bit of confidence that it can soak up from the Vermont win as it will face three top 20 teams of the season next week: 14th-ranked Brown, number-one-ranked UMass.

"We've got a rough week ahead of us, That's for sure," Porter said. "it's possible that we could lose all three, but we're pretty confident. We're playing well right now--it will be nice to see where we fit in with some of the best teams in the country."

"All three teams this week are ranked ahead of us right now (the Crimson is unranked as of last week), so it will be nice to see if we can knock one of them off," Browne said. "But it won't be easy--we're going to have to play very, very well."

Especially against Princeton. The Tigers are undefeated on the year (5-0), and by far the best team in the country right now.

"We're going to have to make it look a little better if we're going to pull that one off," Rice said.