Following its surprising 2-0 loss to Brown last Saturday, the Harvard women's soccer team may be down, but it is by no means out.

As shocking as the upset by Brown was, the Crimson (2-2, 1-1 Ivy) still outplayed its opponents for much of the contest, and, with the season still in its early stages, Harvard has plenty of time to get back on track.

One game, after all, does not make an entire season.

Apparently, though, some of the kind folks in Providence have lost sight of that fact. In yesterday's edition of Brown's student newspaper, the Daily Herald, a reporter praised the Brown women's soccer team for "soundly thrashing" the Crimson. That assessment might come as somewhat of a surprise to those who attended the game or even looked at the box score. The Crimson outshot the Bears, 20-10, and earned ten corner kicks compared to the Bears' two.

Then again, the same reporter also proclaimed Brown, which crept into the Top-25 this week, to be "a legitimate powerhouse". Such a description would certainly have been appropriate a decade ago when Brown won nine league championships in a row, but it seems a tad extreme in light of the Bears' woes in more recent years. Even with its win over Harvard on Saturday, Brown still only has two Ivy wins in the past three years.

Given all that, Brown's upset is most likely an indication of a program getting back on its feet.

It perhaps also illustrates the growing parity within the Ivy League this season. Whereas last year, Harvard needed to post a flawless 7-0 Ivy record to claim the league championship, it is highly unlikely that the conference will require perfection of its champion again this year. In fact, through the first two weeks of the Ivy season, Princeton is the only undefeated league squad among those teams that have played at least two games.

Three teams were unbeaten at this point in 1999.