M. Soccer to Play B.U. in Tourney First Round

Get your office pools ready and waiting, because it is now time for November madness.

The NCAA today announced the pairings for the 1994 NCAA men's Division I soccer Tournament, and there is only one team in the brackets with a losing record.

That team is from Cambridge, MA. And it isn't the Massachussetts Institute of Technology.

Harvard goes into the Tournament with a 5-8-2 record, by far the worst record of any school in the 32-team seeding.

First round games begin this weekend, as Harvard travels across the Charles to number one Boston University (18-0-1) on Sunday for a 1 p.m. match-up.

The Terriers defeated the Crimson earlier this season by the score of 3-2 in a very close-fought game.

Harvard earned an automatic bid to the Tournament by virtue of its Ivy League championship, which Harvard secured with its 2-0 overtime victory over Brown two weekends ago.

The Crimson won no games outside of the Ancient Eight and have tied but one.

It is safe to say that without winning the Ivy title Harvard would not have received an at-large bid.

In fact, all the rest of the teams in the Tournament have more than twice as many wins as the Crimson.

No bother.

None of these bad omens really bothers the feel-good Harvard team to any great extent.

"[B.U.'s] a good team with an unbelievable record," Harvard captain Pepper Brill said, "but the way we've been playing we feel that we can beat anyone.

"We've had a bunch of losses, but if you look at the scores of the games they are really pretty close."

The turf at B.U.'s Nickerson Field is an artificial surface, which is not exactly the playing surface that the Crimson are used to.

Nevertheless, Harvard is not complaining about it by a long shot.

"We would have liked to play it on grass," Brill said, "but you can't be upset about that.

"Plus, we've had two weeks to prepare for it."

If the Crimson win against the Terriers, its next opponent will be the winner of the Brown-UNH game in a game to be play the next weekend.

If there is a Las Vegas line on this game, it probably favors B.U. by a bundle.

But to Harvard's credit, it is better to peak late in the season than to not peak at all, and the Crimson are certainly traversing the upside of the proverbial mountain now.

"Our losses don't reflect the type of soccer that we've been playing," Brill said. "The tournament is a whole new season."

And in the brave new season that is any NCAA tournament, anything can happen.