Men’s Soccer Slips Late, Earns Tie

The Harvard men’s soccer team was two minutes away from securing its second straight Ivy League win, when Cornell’s Chase Aaronson got off a shot that tied the game for good.

The ball was thrown in from the left into the penalty box but was kicked away, only to find the foot of Aaronson, who shot on goal. The Crimson (4-3-4, 1-0-1 Ivy) couldn’t do anything about the ball that somehow made it past the congested penalty area and went straight to the left bottom corner of the net. The Big Red (3-3-4, 0-1-1 Ivy), playing at Ohiri Field on Saturday, took the game to double overtime with that shot and salvaged a 1-1 draw from what seemed to be an imminent loss.

“Credit to Cornell for sticking to their game plan,” Harvard coach Carl Junot said. “That was how they hoped to get their goal this game and they did. When you have someone that can throw the ball in from that far, they put a lot of pressure on your goal, and eventually that pressure paid off for them.”

Earlier in the game, the Crimson went up on the scoreboard thanks to a great back-and-forth between junior Ben Tsuda and freshman Kyle Henderson. Tsuda received the ball wide left and played it in to Henderson in the middle. Tsuda quickly ran into the penalty area and received a pass back from Henderson.

The junior’s cut to the middle freed him up for a shot on goal which the goalie blocked, but the rebound fell to Tsuda’s feet once more, and this time the midfielder put it away. Tsuda kicked the ball into the ground so that the bounce would fly over the goalie, a nifty finish from inside the box with 29 minutes left to play.

The team that Junot fielded against Cornell had two notable absences. Sophomore forward Brian Rogers and junior defender Baba Omosegbon were out with injuries sustained in the past week. Rogers dislocated his arm in last week’s matchup against Yale, and Omosegbon hasn’t featured for the Crimson in the past two games due to a muscle strain. Junot expects to have both players back for next week’s matchup at No. 13 Brown.

The first half belonged to the Crimson, as the home side outshot the Big Red, 7-3. As the period progressed, Harvard’s possession of the ball became increasingly dangerous, setting up opportunities for freshman forward Connor McCarthy and junior midfielder Jamie Rees.

With 16 minutes left in the first half, a pass from just outside the box into the penalty area released Rees for a potential shot on goal, but he stopped the ball behind him and was moving too fast to stop himself, falling to the ground frustrated with the lost opportunity.

Only a couple of minutes later, Henderson took a free kick that almost connected with McCarthy’s head, but the ball sailed a little too high for the freshman forward.

Cornell came out running in the second half, setting up a couple of dangerous plays through the use of long throw-ins.

In the 51st minute, a long Big Red throw-in flew past the numerous players gathered in the penalty area and rebounded off a player, going straight at the goal before a defender was able to clear it out.

In a subsequent play, another long throw-in resulted in a frenzy to clear the ball, and a Cornell played waiting outside the box was able to get a final shot off that went high over the crossbar.

The Crimson slowly regained possession, and Henderson tested the goalie with 32 minutes to play, but Big Red goalkeeper Rick Pflasterer easily scooped up his shot.

Three minutes later, Tsuda converted the only goal of the match for Harvard.

“I think the attack was good,” Tsuda said. “We put it on Cornell a lot. We possessed the ball most of the time, and towards the end we were absorbing a lot of their long throws and fighting through it, but we did pretty well overall except that little mistake.”

Cornell’s tying score with 1:46 left to play led to two overtime periods in which Harvard created several opportunities but couldn’t find the back of the net.

“We just have a lot of experience with overtime, so I told them it’s a position we’ve been in this season and that you can’t predict the outcome of the game,” Junot said. “But every overtime we’ve been in, I feel like we’ve created three or four opportunities to win the game, and the question is whether we were going to capitalize on one of those three or four opportunities.”

—Staff writer Brian A. Campos can be reached at bcampos@fas.harvard.edu.