Kerr's plan, however, did not unfold.

Over the course of the first five games, Harvard managed a 1-3-1 record and was outscored 15-4. Losses in the string included a 3-2 overtime defeat in the season opener against Providence, a 6-0 trouncing against then-No.1 Creighton and a 1-1 tie against Boston University.

"The schedule that we started off with the first four or five or six games was tough," Kerr said. "Maybe we could look back and say that if we had won that Providence game our confidence would have been a lot better than it ended up being. We might have gotten it back in a couple of games, but the opposition we played after that game was too tough to handle."

Nonetheless, Kerr's squad did register a 2-1 win over Columbia only a week after the Providence loss and could have looked to the strong performance to regain confidence lost in the previous week.

But in the weeks following the Columbia loss, the injuries began to pile-up. Perhaps the most costly of all came after a 1-1 tie to Boston

University, when Kelly injured his hand in a non-soccer incident.

Soon after, sophomores Joey Smolen, Marko Soldo and Alan Bengtzen would all be lost to injury for part or all of the season.