Laxwomen Set for Playoffs

It becomes do-or-die Wednesday for the Harvard women's lacrosse squad, when it goes in search of that first-ever national championship. The laxwomen should be the favorites and hold home field advantage in the single-elimination showdown, with Wednesday's winner moving on to next weekend's quarterfinal and the loser moving on to next year.

The Crimson's first-round opponent, and the NCAA tourney seedings, will be announced today, but all indications are that the squad will hold the sixth-seeded position. In the latest poll, Temple, Penn State, Maryland, Delaware and UMass were all ranked ahead of Harvard, and those rankings don't figure to change much.

The NCAA tourney--which will feature 12 teams--opens across the Eastern seaboard this week and will culminate the weekend of May 21-22 with the finals at the University of Pennsylvania. The top four seeded teams will receive first-round byes, with the next four squads holding home field advantage in this week's first round. Most probable first-round opponents for the Crimson will be Dartmouth, Princeton or Northwestern.

Harvard will take a seven-game winning streak and an impressive 11-3-1 record into the national tourney. The Ivy League champs ended their regular season campaign with a 9-3 win over the University of New Hampshire Saturday and will spend today and tomorrow preparing for the tourney. The squad will be looking to improve on last year's seventh-place national finish.

In Saturday's regular season finale, which came just two days after the Crimson's impressive 22-8 Ivy League championship victory over Dartmouth, the laxwomen stopped a University of New Hampshire squad that was in serious need of a win.

For the Wildcats, their chances of receiving an NCAA bid rested on a wing and a prayer--and a good showing against the Crimson. So entering Saturday's game, the UNH squad knew it needed to stop the explosive Crimson attack, which had been averaging almost 17 goals a game.

"They needed to be close," Harvard Coach Carole Kleinfelder said afterwards. "Even if they could keep the score down, that would look good to the selection committee."

And by halftime, the Wildcats playoff hopes were looking up. Using a stall offense--out that saw the visitors control the ball for the first five minutes of the game and then for minutes at a time in the remainder of the first half--UNH posed little threat to the Crimson. But without the ball, Harvard posed little threat to the Wildcats.

With the first 25 minutes history, the score stood at 2-2, with the Crimson's top scorer, Francesca DenHartog, accounting for both Harvard goals. And strangely enough, both Wildcat tallies came off penalty shots.

But at halftime, Kleinfelder made several key adjustments, instructing her troops to pressure UNH's ballhandlers into making turnovers.

"I told the attack to come all the way back and make some people who don't normally touch the ball have to," the Crimson coach said. "That would cause some turnovers, and once that happened I told them to go right to the goal."

So foregoing its normally potent passing attack, the Crimson took the ball away from the UNH stallers, and went right to its goal, to its goal and to its goal again.

Just several minutes after the Wildcats had taken a 3-2 lead, the Crimson's Maureen Finn brought her troops back. And with her three quick tallies, Harvard stood stop the Wildcats, 6-3. And from there, the visitors had to open it up, looking for ways to get back on the scoreboard.

Out of its stall, though, UNH couldn't compete with the much stronger Crimson squad, which finished off the game with three more scores--one from Ellen Velie, one from Jennifer White and the last from DenHartog.

"We were able to change our style and still win," a very pleased Kleinfelder said after-wards. "That feels pretty good heading into the NCAAs."

THE NOTEBOOK: The seven-game winning streak is far short of the club's 18-game record not during the 1979-80 seasons... The Crimson has recovered from the rash of injuries that plagued the squad earlier this year... DenHarlog leads the squad in goals with 54.