Laxmen Outlast Wildcats For Second Victory, 8-7

The Harvard men's lacrosse team was due for a win.

That pretty much explains its down-to-the-wire, 8-7 victory over New Hampshire, a New England powerhouse, yesterday at the Business School field.

Exactly a week earlier, the Crimson hit bottom in its disastrous early-season slump when it went scoreless for an entire half against Brown. But Saturday at Delaware, Harvard showed some of the aggressiveness it had been lacking, falling just short in a 9-7 loss.

"In every game we came out hard," team scoring leader Rob Hawley said after yesterday's contest. "We got leads and then lost our intensity. This game we didn't let it get away."

Not that it wasn't close call, though. A scoring spree by UNH's Chad Doe wiped out a four-goal first-half lead. And the Crimson suffered another long scoring drought--24:55, stretching from the second to the fourth quarter. But a gift goal by Harvard's Peter Follows brought the Crimson back to life, and the hosts held off late Wildcat pressure to preserve the win.

Harvard raised its record to 2-5 (0-3 in the Ivies) with the victory. And though both triumphs were one-goal squeakers, yesterday's outcome was encouraging for the Crimson, not only for the improvement in its play but because it beat a team ranked 11th in the nation last week.

UNH's impressive record didn't seem to intimidate Harvard at the start, as Co-Captains Brendan Meagher and Rich Rainaldi pumped two goals past Wildcat goalie Tom Nickerson in the four minutes. After UNH's Doe notched the first of his five goals, Harvard struck back 78 seconds later when Follows set up attackman Steve Bartenfelder.

Freshman Tim McCaffrey made it 4-16:19 into the second quarter, Hawley scored 41 seconds later, and it seemed a Crimson land-slide might develop.

But at that point the Harvard offense hit its dry spell and Doe, a senior midfielder, went to work on the Harvard defense, scoring four consecutive goals. With the gap narrowed to 5-2, halftime failed to slow the one-man attack. Barely two minutes into the second half, he carried from midfield and scored again. The most spectacular effort in his streak came 11 minutes later, when Doe faked out one defender, slipped between two more and shot past goalie Tim Pendergast to make it 5-4.

But after Doe tied it up :36 into the final stanza. UNH gave Harvard the break it needed. Wildcat defender Scott Angell's pass, intended for his goalie, landed instead in Follows's stick as the Yardling stood in front of an unguarded net.

Though UNH tied it once more at six, that goal got the Crimson attack working again. Goals by Meagher and Jamie Wright provided the necessary margin as Harvard then survived intense UNH pressure in the final minutes.

THE NOTEBOOK: Harvard takes on Yale at the B-School field Saturday afternoon...Last Saturday, Penn nearly became the first Ivy team to beat Cornell in Ithaca since 1969, leading 6-3 in the third quarter, but the Big Red rallied for a 13-8 win.