Despite the unfavorable result, Popp also found the silver lining in his team’s resilience.

“It was a loss, but [it was] a moral victory.”

IONA 13, HARVARD 4

While Harvard struggled to adjust to the non-regulation size pool, the Gaels found themselves at home, mercilessly putting away goal after unanswered goal.

“[Iona] has a different set-up,” Roller said. “We weren’t able to adapt.”

But Minnis found the pool to be no excuse for Harvard’s less-than-stellar performance.

“There were few things we did well [against Iona] to be honest,” said Minnis. “Their offense didn’t do anything surprising … We just didn’t get it together out there.”

Whatever the issue was, Iona outworked the Crimson on both sides of the pool.

Despite five saves from Popp and another nine from sophomore goalie Jimmy Field, the Crimson was unable to avert the potent Gael offense and was outscored by nine points.

With two weeks before its home opener against MIT, Harvard has an opportunity to return to the drawing board.

This weekend’s pair of losses highlighted that there will not be a shortage of things to work on in the practices leading up to its five-game stretch of home games.

“We are going to go back into preseason mode,” Minnis said. “We are going to rework every component of the game.”