Postseason tournaments have a tendency to produce Cinderella teams and this year, the Crimson is just that. Though on paper Harvard is just as talented as any team out there, no squad has been forced to overcome obstacles as high and expectations as low as Harvard has.

If office pools were as popular among women's soccer fans as they are for men's basketball enthusiasts, a lot of people would be out a lot of money because of Harvard.

But the Crimson is not done yet. Westfall, for one, believes the Crimson has plenty of magic left.

"I'd love to see us be the Gonzaga of this NCAA Tournament," said Westfall, referring to the small-town school that advanced all the way to the Elite Eight of the men's basketball NCAA tournament in 1999.

While Harvard has a chance to be the Gonzaga of this year's tourney, last year it was the women's soccer equivalent of Duke or Michigan State. The 1999 Crimson won 14 games in the regular season, soared as high as seventh in the national polls, and received a first-round bye in the tournament. But Harvard was upset in the first round by Boston College, 1-0.

In comparison, this year's crew lost more games than any Crimson team since 1993, spent more weeks on the outskirts of the national polls than it did on the Top 25, and backed into the tournament after dropping its last five games of the season. Yet now Harvard finds itself just four wins away from a national championship.

"The difference has been attitude," junior forward Caitlin Costello said. "Last year, we might have been a little overconfident. Going in this year, we had more at stake--we had something to prove."