STORRS, Conn.—The Harvard women’s soccer team’s season came to an end Saturday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament with a 1-0 defeat at No. 13 Connecticut.

Although the end came earlier than the team would have liked, the Crimson (11-6) was still pleased with the way it played at NCAAs—especially given its 2-4 conclusion to the regular season.

“We turned it around after those [Ivy] lossses,” said co-captain Caitlin Costello, who was Harvard’s leading goal-scorer. “We went out in style. We may have lost the game [to UConn], but it was not easy for them to win. We did everything we could.”

Just like last year, the Crimson managed to lessen the sting of a fourth-place Ivy finish by playing strong in the NCAA tournament. Harvard’s epic quadruple -overtime victory against Hartford last Thursday made the Crimson one of just 10 programs nationwide to reach the second round of NCAAs each of the past five seasons.

“I think we had some great moments early [in the season], but I think we lost focus,” said Harvard Coach Tim Wheaton. “We forgot the work that goes into winning. One of our real objectives this weekend was to take advantage of that second chance that the NCAA provides, not so much by winning— which is nice—but by playing the way we know we want to play, and we did that these last two games.”

Of the four Ivy teams that made NCAAs, only Dartmouth made it to the Sweet 16. The Big Green received one of the easiest draws in the tournament and advanced to the third round with a wins over UW-Milwaukee and Michigan.

Penn and Princeton, like Harvard, were both eliminated by teams from the Big East Conference—Villanova and Rutgers, respectively.

UConn 1, Harvard 0

The No. 23 Crimson showed few ill effects from its quadruple-overtime victory over Hartford early on, but midway through the second half, the Huskies began to take control.

UConn (18-5) had been applying consistent pressure on the Harvard net in the minutes before the game-winning goal. The scoring opportunity came about as Huskie midfielder Alexa Borisjuk took control of an errant ball and sent it wide left to forward Kristen Graczyk,. She came into the box all alone and left-footed the ball across the net into the right corner for the score.

“We won the ball, we kept possession, we defended well, and we created oppoortunities,” said UConn Coach Len Tsantiris. “When you do that, you’re going to win the game. It was a matter of us finding the time and connecting up front to finish.”

It was tough turn of events for the Crimson, who had come close to scoring just several minutes before the UConn goal, when junior forward Joey Yenne was nearly sprung free inside the 18, but she was ruled offsides by a step.

Harvard had few quality scoring chances on the day. One of its best chances came early in the game when junior midfielder Bryce Weed made a great individual effort to set up Costello with an open shot from 15 yards out. But Costello sent the ball straight into the hands of Huskie goalkeeper Shanna Caldwell.

The only other Harvard shot on goal came from junior forward Beth Totman a few minutes later.

“I don’t think we generated enough great chances today,” Wheaton said. “I think we weren’t as careful with the ball as I would have liked to be. But overall I was pretty happy.”