Final Straw for M. Water Polo

Some problems just never go away. All season long, the Harvard men's water polo team has been fighting a demon and has never been able to come out the victor when it counts.

The final blow came in the form of undoubtably the most crushing loss of the season. Harvard fell for the second time this season to Brown on Saturday, 10-8, at the Eastern Qualifying Tournament at Brown.

With the Eastern Tournament being held at Harvard in two weeks, Harvard had high hopes of winning it all and perhaps even advancing to the NCAA Tournament. With this defeat, however, the Crimson is now eliminated from the tournament and has only the Ivy League Tournament left to play this season.

Throughout the entire season the problem has remained constant and costly.

Always playing strong and tough, the Crimson has allowed teams continually to build up early leads. The struggles to come back have been just too much for Harvard, as it loses close game after close game.

"All season long, we've spotted teams leads and have come back to tie the game or go up by one goal," Harvard coach Don Benson '88 said. "We never seem to have enough to close it."

Against Brown, the scenario and, unfortunately for Harvard, the results remained the same.

After allowing Brown to extend to an early 6-3 lead, Harvard had to battle back in order to just tie the score at six.

Like a dagger to the heart, with only fifteen seconds left in the first half, Brown found the back of the net to give them both the technical and emotional lead, 7-6.

There would be no heroics or overtime this time for the Crimson as the Bears held on for the two goal victory.

The Crimson did make things interesting as two of its goals were called back--one on an offensive foul. In the end, Brown exploited any Harvard transitional breakdowns with five of its 10 goals coming off of the fast-break.

"We outplayed Brown," Benson said. "We had a great deal of movement on our offense. But we just had breakdowns on a few instances, where Brown scored on fast-break goals--I don't know how [those breakdowns] happened, but they hurt us."

Leading the Crimson attack, sophomore Mike Zimmerman pounded the Brown defense with four goals. Freshman Dror Bar-Ziv found the net twice while seniors Dan Arbalaez and captain Jonathan Gill snatched a goal a piece.

History is definitely a cruel animal for in the past 16 years, Harvard has beaten Brown only twice.

"I don't know what decided the game," junior Andy Davis said. "Our teams are so evenly matched that it always comes down to something mental. There is also a lot of history involved between these two teams so they go into each game with such confidence and we can't seem to get over that hump to beat them."

The worst part of the weekend, however, came when Harvard had to return to the tournament to play Boston College and MIT--both subpar teams.

Nonetheless, Harvard rolled by both teams. Disposing of Boston College, 14-6, Harvard lacked its typical drive in its 18-9 bashing of MIT.

"Despite the deep score against MIT, it was a lackluster performance," Benson said. "It took us a while to get it going against BC. Being defeated by Brown was deflating."

In its last week of practice, the Crimson will have to accept the fact that the Ivy League Tournament is the only chance left to make a statement to its critics and to itself. It may also have the opportunity to meet Brown one more time.

"We know we have one more chance at Brown and that is enough fire to get us up for next weekend," Davis said. "It will be a good tournament between [Brown, Princeton and Harvard] and also it will be a chance for us to maintain some of our pride to beat those two teams."

Any dream of the Eastern Championship have been washed away and that is quite a difficult fact to swallow for a team with such high hopes.

"The East is really wide open," Benson said. "Any team has the opportunity to win the Eastern Championships, and now we're left out."

Left out, maybe, but not dead just yet.

"There is no doubt in the last few weeks we have been focusing all our attention to beat Brown and to lose was emotionally exhausting," Davis said. "We have one more week of season, four more days of working as hard as we can and to suck it up and beat those teams.

There is a score to settle next weekend and the Crimson has one last chance to rid itself of the demon which has been plaguing it all season.

Perhaps then, Harvard will be able to allow this season to be laid down and rest in peace. Harvard  8 Brown  10

Harvard  14 B.C.  6

Harvard  18 M.I.T.  9

Harvard  14 B.C.  6

Harvard  18 M.I.T.  9

Harvard  18 M.I.T.  9