Ford's Squad Can't Look Past Tigers

With all the attention being given to next Saturday's soccer "showdown" between Ivy League leaders Harvard and Brown, you'd hardly know that the two squads are playing other Ivy opponents this weekend. And next week's battle might not loom so large if the undefeated Bruins are surprised by Cornell today or the Crimson squad, undefeated in Ivy play, is ambushed by Princeton this morning at 10:30 in New Jersey.

Brown will have a good deal more to worry about today than Harvard, as the Big Red is the only other squad in the Ivies that has won more than it has lost. Posting a 2-1-1 league record, Cornell has an outside shot at the Ivy title. The Big Red desperately needs a win over Brown or else faces elimination.

Princeton, meanwhile, is relegated to the role of the spoiler as the Tigers have gone winless in four games, losing three of them. But Harvard certainly cannot afford to take Princeton too lightly (there's an old sports cliche about looking ahead and not seeing what's coming up from behind) as the Tigers could salvage a good deal of pride with an upset victory.

Coach George Ford's squad is coming off a 3-1 loss to Tufts last Tuesday, that snapped a four game winning streak. "We made too many mistakes," Ford admitted after the game, "and we weren't really up. But [today] is a big one and we'll find out what kind of team we have."

What kind of team that will be depends on whether or not the Tigers can successfully shut off Harvard's high-scoring Lyman Bullard. The Jumbos managed to sit on Bullard and stifle the Crimson offense which had relied on the sophomore for the last four wins.

Tied for Lead

Bullard is the leading goal scorer in the Ivy League, with six. Brown's sophomore sensation Fred Pereira is tied with Bullard on points having tallied five times and assisted once.

Princeton cannot boast such a striker, and in fact can't boast much of an offense at all. After a 3-0 shutout at Brown last Saturday, the Tigers were left with a grand total of one goal scored in four Ivy contests.

The brightest light on the New Jersey squad is goalkeeper Sergio Zeballos. The Passaic sophomore is getting a lot of practice in the nets as he was forced to make 15 saves against the Bruins.

Zeballos's counterpart in the Harvard goal is Ben Bryan, who has the third best goals-against average (0.8) in the league.

The leading goalkeepers in the circuit are Jon Ross (0.3) of Cornell and Mike Hampden (0.5) of Brown who will be staring at each other from opposite ends of the field this morning. If Hampden and his squad come out on top in Providence while Zeballos and his team continue to be submissive in Princeton, everyone will get what they already seem to be expecting: a battle of undefeateds on the, Business School field a week from today.