"I think it keeps our confidence, but I don't think it raised it any," junior Dana Tenser said. "It just gave us a mid-week check on our playing ability."

"I think that the biggest difference is that we're scoring a lot more goals than we used to, but it's not that we're playing different teams," Wheaton said. "It's that we're playing better against those teams."

No argument here, coach. Your team has shown it can thrash an Ivy foe (6-2 over Penn on Saturday), come from behind to topple a tough non-League opponent (4-1 in over-time against Colgate on Sunday) and then stomp on a fledgling program.

The next step is to defeat a good Ivy League school, as in Yale this Saturday. Not only are the Bulldogs more skilled (they even defeated preseason favorite and bitter Harvard rival Brown) than anyone Harvard has played except maybe Cornell and Colgate, but the intensity level for that game is certainly much higher than what yesterday's match showed.

"I think we had a lot of hard games before this which were physically taxing," Henderson said. "This was a good confidence boost--the rest will come."

Warning--Harvard has to make the rest come.

The players must come out with more intensity than they did yesterday and certainly have to sustain it for 90 minutes.

"Basically, if we're not up for an Ivy League match that could determine the Ivy championship, a regional match that could determine who makes the NCAAs and Yale all combined into one game, and we cannot get up for that game, then we cannot get up for any game," Wheaton said.