No. 18 W. Soccer Travels to No. 9 UConn

After falling to Princeton in a showdown of Ivy League leaders on Saturday, the Harvard women’s soccer will have a chance to redeem itself in a battle of Northeast regional powers at Connecticut under the lights at 7 p.m. tonight.

In the NSCAA rankings that were released yesterday morning, UConn regained its status as the No. 1 team in the Northeast region, thanks largely to a Sunday victory over nationally-ranked No. 4 Notre Dame.

The Crimson (8-2, 3-1 Ivy), meanwhile, fell from No. 1 to No. 2 in the NSCAA regional rankings. In the national poll, UConn (12-4) rose from No. 15 to No. 9, while the Crimson fell from No. 10 to No. 18. Princeton, now the only Ivy unbeaten team, entered the poll in the No. 19 spot.

Harvard is out to reverse the recent rankings change tonight.

“Saturday’s loss was disappointing to everyone, but if we’re as good as we’re capable of being, then we’ll obviously be able to turn things around and get ourselves back into the position that we deserve,” said co-captain Caitlin Costello, who leads the team with seven goals on the season.

The fact that UConn is entering the game coming off a win over Notre Dame, who eliminated Harvard in the NCAA Sweet 16 last season, does not worry the Crimson.

“Their game was a lot like our game with Princeton,” said junior goalkeeper Cheryl Gunther. “Notre Dame outplayed UConn, but UConn had some good luck, just like Princeton.”

Costello and the Crimson frontrunners will need to solve a UConn defense—led by Big East Goalkeeper of the Week Shanna Caldwell and Big East Defensive Player of the Week Casey Zimny—that has given up just one goal in its last four games. Against Princeton, Harvard scored just one goal on 21 shots.

“We played awesome against Princeton, but we just didn’t finish,” Gunther said.

The Huskies’ leading scorer is freshman Kristen Graczyk, an Albuquerque, N.M., native who has eight goals and three assists on the season. Connecticut has also been getting good production from its seniors, namely Alexa Borisjuk, who has six goals and a team-leading six assists on the season. In the 3-1 win over Notre Dame, all three goals were scored by seniors on UConn’s Senior Day.

Gunther and the rest of the defense will be looking to get back into the form that limited teams to just two goals during the Crimson’s eight-game win streak preceding the Princeton loss. The Tigers matched that total of two goals on just four shots in one game. The first Princeton goal was scored on a corner kick that fell in front of two Tiger sisters at the far side of the net. The overtime game-winner came on a nearly uncontested header from the far post on a free kick.

Gunther is confident that such breakdowns are preventable.

“We have to watch our communication on defense and I definitely have to be a lot more aggressive in goal,” Gunther said. “It’s nothing we can’t do—just a lot of little things.”

A victory over UConn is no longer crucial in terms of securing an NCAA first-round bye, since there are no byes now that the tournament has expanded to 64 teams. But starting this year, only the top sixteen seeds get to host first and second-round games, so regional battles such as Harvard vs. UConn still have high stakes.

The UConn game has been critical in determining the team’s fate each of the past two seasons. In 1999, Harvard’s victory over UConn—its first since 1981—propelled the Crimson to a top regional ranking and a first-round bye.

But in 2000, the Crimson, like this year’s squad, was set to play UConn following the end of an eight-game win streak. Harvard lost its second straight game to the Huskies and went on to lose three more in a row.

Nevertheless, the Crimson enters tonight’s game with confidence in the quality of its play and its ability to rebound from Saturday’s defeat.

“I think we did the majority of things right on Saturday,” Costello said. “The one thing we learned is that we need to stay focused and we can’t let little distractions take us out of our game.”