“We haven’t gotten to where we should be this year,” Mazzoleni said after Harvard’s 5-3 win over UMass at Bright.

“We’re not that talented,” he added. “I don’t know where the perception [comes from] that we’re talented. We have 12 kids that are drafted—a lot of them are drafted on size and potential.”

With all due respect to Mazzoleni, his team was (and still is) very talented. It’s just not consistent. That’s a point he made loud and clear earlier this season when he was asked what he expected from his team during a pre-Christmas game against Princeton, Mazzoleni turned the question around on this reporter.

Mazz: “What do you expect? I mean, you tell me. You cover us. What do you expect?”

This reporter, in a much lower voice: “I don’t know.”

Mazz, not really stopping to listen to my answer: “You don’t know, do you? Honest to God, you don’t know. I don’t know, I’m saying I should know, I don’t know.”

Pause.

Mazz: “Are they going to come out and play like they did tonight? Or are they going to come out and play with 15 guys playing and five impostors?”

For much of the season, that was the question. Which Harvard team would show up, the one that beat BU and UMass or the one that was swept in its season series against Princeton?

Over its last eight games, that question was answered and the Crimson created a strong finish to a previously mediocre season. But the end result was still something shy of where Harvard hoped to be come late March.

“I think Harvard is knocking on the door and very close to being one of the top-tier teams in the nation,” Smith said. “[When the seniors signed on to come to Harvard], the coaches talked about bringing this program back to national prominence. That’s been our goal our entire four years.”

And, by one measure, the team and its coaches have been successful in attempting to return Harvard to national prominence. Name for me, if you can, all the teams—there are only five of them—that have been in the NCAA Tournament the last three seasons.

Obviously there’s Minnesota, winner of two straight national titles. And the teams that the Gophers beat in those two finals, Maine (2002) and New Hampshire (2003). CCHA powerhouse Michigan makes the cut as well. The last of the five is the Harvard Crimson.

Clearly being grouped in with Michigan, Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire is pretty heady company. But while those teams have won national finals, or lost in them, or at least made the semi-finals, Harvard alone has gone winless in three chances. That is what separates those teams from Harvard, postseason victories versus postseason futilities.

While the Crimson’s first round loss in 2002 might have been understandable—they were, after all, coming off a shocking overtime-filled run through the ECACs that caught almost everyone by surprise—the team’s early exit with the hottest offensive player in the East in 2003 (Dominic Moore ’03, just my opinion, but the numbers provide a pretty compelling argument) and a talent-laden roster projected as one of the best in the nations this year, have been disappointments.

Two big chances to take a further step towards national recognition, two big (third period) losses.

“There’s great expectations at our program,” Mazzoleni intoned. “Programs like Maine are a measuring stick for where we want to go.

“We’re still knocking on the door trying to take that next step…[But] I very much believe we’re going in the right direction.”

—Staff writer Timothy M. McDonald can be reached at tmcdonal@fas.harvard.edu.