Tornaritis Nets Last Minute Tally

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Following the Cornell game last weekend, junior captain Will Craig of the Harvard men’s soccer team’s junior captain said that his defense could not continue to give up golden scoring opportunities when it faced Brown the next week.

Despite his words of warning, the Crimson (7-5-0, 2-1-0 Ivy) escaped several very close calls before junior midfielder Nicholas Tornaritis scored with 53 seconds left in regulation to beat the Bears (5-4-2, 1-2-0), 1-0.

With just under a minute to play, Tornaritis received the ball from his brother, junior midfielder Anthony Tornaritis, near midfield and started to drive the ball upfield. With Anthony Tornaritis and sophomore forward Matt Hoff distracting the Brown defenders, Nicholas found himself with a lot of open space, dribbled through a couple of his opponents and ripped a shot to the lower left-hand side of the net from the top of the penalty box to put the Crimson right back into Ivy title contention with its third-straight win.

“I was at the 18, and I thought I’d just let it rip,” said Nicholas Tornaritis, who has now scored once in the past three games and is second on the team in scoring. “I was wide open.”

Following the score, the entire Harvard team—including the coaching staff and all those on the field—jumped up and down and hugged one other near the team bench as the large contingent of Crimson fans began cheering in the stands.

The players and fans alike seemed to temporarily forget that there was still some game to be played.

The Bears took advantage of the opportunity and kicked off before Harvard had a chance to get completely reset on the field. They ended up driving the length of the field and got a last chance to score with a corner kick. After stationing all its players—including goalie Christopher Gomez—directly in front of the Crimson net, Brown sent the ball just a few yards outside of the box. As it bounced dangerously close to the goal, the ball miraculously ended up past the end line, just a couple of yards to the left of the post with seconds left to play.

“[Junior goalie] Ryan [Johnson] just told us...that his toe got in the way of that last kick and deflected off his toe, into his hand and out,” Crimson coach John Kerr said. “So that was huge.”

The last-minute desperation attempt was not the only chance that Brown had to score on the day. The Bears’ Ibrahim Diane—whose quick footwork led to a couple of runs for Brown—ripped a shot that sailed over the Crimson goal after he found himself in a one-on-one opportunity against Johnson at the 67:38 mark.

“We had some good chances that didn’t go in,” Bears coach Mike Noonan said. “We didn’t play very well....Give the credit to Harvard though.”

The Crimson also had several close chances of its own in the more offensively focused second half in which the teams combined for 16 shots—as compared to just 10 in the first. Just 10 minutes after halftime, a free kick from sophomore forward Tom Stapleton sent the ball sailing into the box, where it was headed around by several players and knocked down by Gomez before being cleared out by the Brown defense.

“[The] ball might even have been in,” Nicholas Tornaritis said.

The win also propels Harvard into a tie for third place and hands it control of its own destiny for the Ivy championship.

The Crimson travels to face Ivy-league leading Princeton next Saturday at 4 p.m. But it may be without the services of Stapleton, who limped off the field with just a few minutes left to play and was replaced by sophomore defender David Williams. Stapleton’s status could not be confirmed after the game.

—Staff writer Evan R. Johnson can be reached at erjohns@fas.harvard.edu.