The Harvard men's lacrosse team is assured of making the NCAA Tournament this year if it wins the rest of its games.

And today's matchup against Holy Cross is a big reason why Crimson fans are already eagerly looking forward to the Big Dance.

The three remaining teams on Harvard's schedule are Holy Cross, Cornell and Dartmouth. Of the three, only the No.18 Big Green is ranked. And the Crimson--who was ranked 11th in the latest poll, conducted before its upset of No.8 Brown--is favored against all three.

The Crusaders present the lowliest challenge. The meeting between these two schools was supposed to have taken place in late March, but the extended Boston winter bumped the date back.

Playing Holy Cross (4-8) back then made sense for the Crimson (8-2, 3-1 Ivy), for it gave the team a low-pressure way to get ready for the difficult games during spring break and early April.

But now, Harvard should be firing on all cylinders and needs to get ready for the tournament by playing tough teams.

"We are a far better team than they are," said an honest Harvard coach Scott Anderson. "I don't want to be impolite, but they are not up to the level that we have been facing all season. Holy Cross made sense [to be] on our schedule at the beginning of the year, but this game doesn't make much sense now."

Nevertheless, it's on the schedule and Harvard has got to live with it. So the Crimson might as well look for the positives.

One of those will be that Anderson will be able to unload his bench, a move that every coach wants to do but few can. If the lead gets up to 20 goals, there's no need to leave in the starting team.

Also, it will force the team to be mentally sharp. If Harvard doesn't, and the game turns out to be close, then the team will have something to improve for the games against Cornell and Dartmouth.

"We want to stay focused and keep playing at a very high level," Anderson said. "The guys know that they have two very difficult games coming up next week and they want to keep playing well."