Booters Beat Brown, 4-0, Showing Offensive Flurry

This morning's Harvard-Brown soccer game ended with the Crimson recording a convincing 4-0 win, but don't credit the victory solely to the potent Harvard offense.

Give large chunks of glory instead to a consistently brilliant defense which completely shut down the Bruin offense to help goalie Ben Erulcar record his first varsity shut out.

The game opened in typical Harvard fashion--slow. The Crimson 11 took the field sluggishly and Brown took the advantage of the lapse to mark several offensive threats.

Only the stellar play of the Harvard backfield, made up of regulars Peter Sergien, John Duggna, and Deniz Perese, plus firsttime starter Andres Keller-Sarmiento kept the ball out of the net.

Don't forget Erulcar either. The Leverett House junior of late has been filling in admirably for the injured regular Peter Walsh, and this morning he did more than expected.

He stopped five shots in those first scary minutes and provided consistent play and leadership for the rest of the game.

The first half was for the most part an exercise on how not to play Coach George Ford's ball control strategy. Cowed because of Brown's reputation for a strong long-ball game, the Crimson midfield looked hesistant, and never took control of the game.

In the second half, though, Harvard came out a little quicker and a lot more confident. The new look bore concrete results at 25:30 into the half, as Captain Michael Smith put in the eventual game winner with an Andy Kronfeld assist.

Misdirection

Following a minor scramble for the ball on the left wing, Kronfeld zipped a pass over to Smith who hesitated for a brief moment before sliding the ball into the lower left corner.

The rejeuvenated Harvard offense made it 2-0 just two minutes later at 27:32. Midfielder John Lyons banged a pass over to Mauro Keller-Sarmiento, who dribbled all the way down the right sideline before making a nice cross pass to Ayrault. The forward chipped it into the center of the net, past a diving Brown goalie.

The Harvard scoring machine continued its domination with an Ayrault to Leo Lanzillo tally at 33:51 to make the score 3-0. Jack Correia notched Harvard's last goal, on an assist from M. Keller-Sarmiento, closing the door on the Brown squad.