M. Water Polo Hosts Brown at Northern Division Championships

One of the best Harvard men's water polo team in recent memory is about to play a team that no one can remember beating.

Tomorrow, the Crimson (13-10, 9-4 CWPA) will host its arch-rival, Brown, in the Northern Division Championships for a shot at qualifying for the Eastern Division Championships. All Harvard has to do is beat Brown to end its long losing streak and advance in the playoffs.

"This is the biggest game of the year," captain Robinson Jacobs said. "The Bears have been our biggest rivals and in my four years playing we have never seemed to beat them."

That held true again this year, when Brown defeated Harvard 12-10 during a rocky opening to the Crimson season.

Harvard impressively turned it around after that defeat, going 13-7.

The Crimson had a blur of wins as it took the Northern League Division and wiped the table with Boston College last Friday, 10-1. The Eagles were one of the teams it lost to in the beginning of the season, 7-6.

"The team's doing very well, seeing the whole pool and all aspects of the game," said Harvard Coach Jim Floerchinger after the game. "They're making good shots and playing good defense. It's 180 degree change from the beginning of the season."

The change could be attributed what Floerchinger calls "one of the best turnaround in attitude" he has ever seen. The dynamics of the team have never been this good.

"We were struggling in the beginning," senior driver Dror Bar-Ziv said. "But now we are getting along remarkably well. This is the best team I played on in the past four years." With the addition of many new players, this year's team is making connections both inside and outside the pool.

"This team the best coherence I have ever seen," Jacobs said. "We play well together and are having fun, too."

The Northern Division Championship will consist of eight teams competing for four spots to go on to the Eastern Division Championships.

The first game determines the top seeds. All the winners advance to Easterns and the rest of the tournament decides rank.

The winner of the Eastern Championships, hosted by the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. will advance to the NCAA Championships, the main event of intercollegiate water polo.

"We are at the pinnacle of the season," Bar-Ziv said. "We are looking towards the Northerns as something we can do as a team."