Whether 2-4-4 or 4-3-3, It Still Equals Zero

The booters tried a new alignment yesterday--four fullbacks, four halfbacks and two strikers--but the result was the same. Another Crimson loss.

For the record, that's three straight shutouts, and going back to the second half of the Columbia game, eleven days ago, 346 minutes and 50 seconds without a Harvard goal.

And now that nagging question of what is wrong with the soccer team becomes a loud, "Are they as good as they were cracked up to be?"

On paper the team is an Ivy contender, with nine returning starters and a bunch of talented freshmen, all in excellent shape.

Up front, there are Lee Nelson and Walter Diaz, who accounted for 19 goals between them last season. The goalkeeper situation was supposed to be the big worry. It hasn't been.

On the field Harvard has dominated all its opponents, including 12th ranked Columbia and 13th ranked UMass, except UConn, playing the controlled offense which was supposed to make it an explosive and exciting team to watch.

But, there have been only three goals in five games. Diaz has one, a garbage job, and Nelson has yet to score.

What has reduced last season's clockwork to guesswork?

It has been a year of intangibles in sports and you can add this to the list. For Harvard, which seemed so deep on offense, lacks a scorer. Nelson and Diaz, for now, have lost that knack of finding the goal, of plucking a ball from midair and blasting it past a goalie.

Both remain confident that they haven't lost their shooting touch. Yet they are bewildered. "I'm not sure of the reason," Nelson said before yesterday's loss. "We don't seem to be sure where the other person is at any given time."

Coach George Ford is also confused, as yesterday's alignment attests. Two attackers did not seem to be the solution to the scoring drought no matter how much the wing halfs ran. Ford has also tried a dozen combinations on the front line trying to create the elusive spark. "Something is missing," he said after the Columbia game. "But I don't know what."

"George says we're holding up on our shots," Diaz said Tuesday night. According to Ford, Diaz and Nelson have sharpened their skills since last year and may be trying to hard for the pretty goal, and playing too cautiously.

But Nelson feels that "It's more of a problem of creating opportunities."

This cautiousness, the second half lapses all seem to point to a mental problem. The difference between last year and this year is that the booters know they are good, that they can play with anyone. In the back of their minds, they seem to be waiting for the good things to happen.

"We've come so close, you know it's going to come," Diaz said the other night.

But so far it hasn't, and the booters are 0-5.