M. Booters Bag NE Top Seed

The Harvard men's soccer team will be the number one seed in the NCAA Tournament New England region, the tournament selection committee announced yesterday.

The Crimson (12-0-2 overall, 6-0 Ivy League) will travel to Storrs, Conn., Sunday to face second-seeded University of Connecticut. UConn, the only other New England team selected, received home field advantage on the basis of better facilities and greater crowd capacity.

Twenty-four squads compete in the post-season playoffs, with two from each of eight geographic regions and eight wild-card selections. Harvard was the only Ivy team chosen.

"You ideally want to play in front of a big crowd, and Connecticut will definitely have one," Harvard Coach Mike Getman said. "It'll be hard to play in front of a crowd like that, but it will also be good for the team."

UConn's field has an estimated capacity of 8000 spectators.

The Crimson and the Huskies met early in the regular season, and the two teams struggled to a 0-0 tie on UConn's home turf. It was the only time all season that the Crimson failed to score.

Rematch?

The tournament pairings offer the Crimson the possibility of re-matches with both teams it tied during regular-season action. Should Harvard defeat UConn, it would face the winner of the Adelphi-Hartwick New York regional championship November 29. The Crimson knotted the 'Wick, 1-1, at Ohiri Field last month.

"I think if we play as well as we can, we're much better than both [Connecticut and Hartwick]," junior back Robert Bonnie said. "We're certainly not going to look by UConn, but if we win and play Adelphi or Hartwick again, I think we're the better team."

"It's nice to see that the teams we struggled with turned out to be so good," Getman said.

Playoffs begin in six of the eight regions this Sunday, with the New York and mid-Atlantic regions not starting until the following weekend. The semifinals and championship game are slated for the weekend of December 5-6, and will be held at one of the Final Four schools.

Not suprisingly, wild card selections were concentrated heavily in the South and Far West--perennial hotbeds of soccer. Six of the eight at-large spots went to those two regions, resulting in a shuffle in the tournament pairings. Clemson and San Diego State were bumped out of their geographic regions and into the Great Lakes and Midwest playoffs.

The tournament teams, by region:

New York: Adelphi, Hartwick.

New England: Harvard, UConn.

Far West: San Francisco, UNLV, UCLA, Fresno State.

Midwest: San Diego State, St. Louis, SMU.

Great Lakes: Clemson, Evansville, Indiana.

Mid-Atlantic: Seton Hall, Rutgers.

South: North Carolina State, South Carolina, North Carolina, Duke.

South Atlantic: William and Mary, Loyola, George Mason, Virginia.

How to Get There

A chartered bus to the Harvard-Connecticut contest will leave Cambridge at 10 a.m. for the 1 p.m. game. The cost per person for transportation will be $10, with game tickets available at the gate.

Ticket prices are $6 for reserved seats, $4 general admission and $3 for students. Those interested in reserving a seat on the bus should contact the men's soccer office (495-4549) or Harvard Sports Information (495-2206).