Men's Soccer to Face Brown on Upswing

So far this fall, the Harvard men’s soccer team has been riding a rocky roller coaster, alternating winning streaks with losing funks.

This Sunday, the Crimson’s matchup with Brown (5-3-2, 1-1-0 Ivy) puts Harvard (6-5-0, 1-1-0) both in a position to keep their positive momentum to judge their postseason and Ivy championship chances.

“We always seem to play them at the critical point in the season,” said junior captain and defender Will Craig. “It is a huge game for both teams. Two losses in the Ivy League and your chances of winning the league are slim.”

The Crimson enters the pivotal contest playing some of its best soccer of the year, having outscored its opponents 7-1 in the past two matches.

“We are just finishing a lot better,” Craig said. “Now we seem to be putting away our chances more, even though I would like to see us improve on getting those easy ones in more often.”

Against a Bears team that has only allowed 1.21 goals per game, Harvard will need to put away every opportunity.

By executing on scoring runs in its wins against Cornell and Holy Cross in the past week, the Crimson has evened its Ivy record and moved above the .500 mark, a barrier it has battled to surpass all year.

Harvard opened the season with two losses against URI and Coastal Carolina, before pulling off a three-game win-streak.

After a loss to Vermont, the Crimson came up with its biggest win-to-date against a Fairfield team that was ranked fifth in the region at the time by the NSCAA.

Then the roller coaster took a dip.

Harvard lost its next two games to Maine and Yale to tumble to under .500, before beating Cornell and Holy Cross.

And now, the Crimson stands just one game behind league-leading Princeton.

“This game is separate from the fact that we’re on a two-game win-streak,” senior defender Sam Wiggin said. “Ivy league games are always more important, especially with this rivalry.”

“It’s very tight at the top,” said head coach John Kerr. “Anything can happen. It should be a fantastic day for the Ivy League. ”

Brown has not been having the ideal season either, although Harvard is quick to point out that it will not underestimate the Bears on Sunday.

“They’ve won a lot of Ivy titles recently,” Wiggin said. “They are the team to beat. These games are always competitive and you have to take statistics with a grain of salt going into them. In rivalry battles, all that stuff goes down the tube.”

Just this past week, the Bears lost to Princeton, knocking it out of the national rankings. Three days later, Brown barely edged a winless Providence team, 3-2.

But the Crimson players said that despite Brown’s mediocre play of late and their weakness in offensive categories—the Browns are ranked fourth in goals scored per game and sixth in shots in the Ivies—the Crimson defense will have to play one of its best games of the season.

“They are really dangerous on set plays,” Craig said. “They play a great ball in from the middle. Against Princeton, they had a couple of great set plays that they just went out and executed.”

“Historically they’ve been very good at corner kicks and free kicks,” Kerr said.

Kerr’s words could not ring truer looking back on past Harvard-Brown games.

In 2002, the Bears beat the Crimson on a last minute goal off a set play.

And just the year before, Brown’s defeat of Harvard at the end of the season gave it a share of the Ivy League title with Princeton over the third-place Crimson.

“With the rivalry between the two teams, it’s real easy to get motivated,” Craig said. “We just have to be careful to not get too pumped up or we won’t be able to relax and play our game.”

Harvard has until 3 p.m. on Sunday to calm down when it kicks off on Stevenson field in Providence.

—Staff writer Gabriel M. Velez can be reached at gmvelez@fas.harvard.edu.