Well, maybe not out of nowhere. Harvard started the season ranked No. 17 in the nation. The Crimson boasted an incoming freshman class that was ranked 19th in the nation to go along with the seventh-best recruit class from a year before. So don't be fooled-there was plenty of promise attached to this group from the beginning.

But a whole lot happened between the preseason and the start of the NCAA Tournament.

For starters, there were injuries. Lots of them. When the Crimson took the field for its season opener against Texas A&M on Sept. 3, it was without both its starting goalkeeper-1999 Ivy League Rookie of the Year Cheryl Gunther-and its leading scorer from a year ago, Beth Totman. Gunther eventually returned three games into the season, but Totman never made a full recovery from her shin sprains and missed the entire year.

The loss of Totman was a major hit to the Crimson's already-depleted scoring unit. In the preseason, the Crimson had already learned that sophomore Caitlin Butler would be out for the year after tearing her ACL. In addition, sophomore Bryce Weed-who led the team in Ivy scoring one year ago-was forced to miss time with a knee injury.

The issue suddenly became who would score the goals. In the early going, it was sophomore forward Joey Yenne, who had finished second on the team in scoring in 1999. This year, the First Team All-Ivy pick did the work of two players, scoring just one fewer goal than she and Totman had combined for in 1999. Through the first three games of the year, Yenne had already notched four goals.

And then came Brown.

On Sept. 23, the Bears-the last-place finisher in the Ivy League in 1999-shut the Crimson out in a stunning 2-0 upset. Yenne was held scoreless and no one else had picked up the slack. Harvard was now 2-0 in games when Yenne scored and 0-2 in the games she didn't.