"We weren't marked up tight enough, and they were able to find an open player and knock it in," McCarthy said. "Makinen is a great player, really good in the air. But there's no excuse, we needed to be marked up on that."

While the Harvard defense may not have executed as well it would have liked on the play, the difficulty did not come by accident. The Irish had specifically planned its strategy on set pieces in the week leading up to Friday's game.

"One thing we saw on the videotape on Harvard is that on corner kicks, they put a couple kids on the post and then they man-mark outside in the box," Notre Dame Coach Randy Waldrum said. "It's very difficult to man-mark in that kind of space, in my opinion, because there's so much traffic that you can kind of get picked. So this week we worked on some set pieces to set some picks and run off the man-marking."

Before the score put Notre Dame ahead, Harvard had succeeded in withstanding a flurry of scoring threats by the Irish, including an apparent goal that was called back by a late offsides call.

The Irish rattled off ten first-half shots.

On the opposite side of the ball, the Notre Dame defense, which has allowed just seven goals on the season, was stingy as usual against the Crimson. Throughout the first half, Harvard struggled to connect on more than two consecutive passes and failed to mount any prolonged threat in the Irish end.

"We thought we could get wide a little better, but they made some adjustments," Wheaton said. "We were getting wider in the first half, finding [sophomore midfielder] Orly [Ripmaster] wide, but then they kept a player up on her to take that away."