Harvard Awaits Yale in Must-Win Game

The semester is coming to a close, and Harvard will be facing Yale on a Saturday afternoon in Harvard Stadium.

The scene is familiar to Crimson faithful, but instead of football, this contest will pit Harvard (8-5, 2-3 Ivy) against the No. 14 Bulldogs (10-2, 3-2) in the men’s lacrosse regular season finale.

“It’s Harvard-Yale; it’s in the stadium. It’s our biggest game of the year,” coach Chris Wojcik '96 said. “Add to that the Ivy League Tournament implications, and it’s definitely going to be an emotional game.”

The Crimson is currently tied with Princeton for fourth in the Ivy standings and will advance to the Ivy League Tournament with a victory over Yale or a Brown victory over Dartmouth.

If Harvard loses and Dartmouth wins, things get a little more complicated. The Bulldogs, currently in third, have already clinched their spot at the tournament, which No. 2 Cornell, the undefeated regular-season conference champion, will host.

“There’s a lot of potential scenarios for advancing, but the only way we will know for sure is with a victory,” freshman Daniel Eipp said. “We want to control our own destiny; we want to blaze our own path.”

A win would help Harvard in more ways than one. The Crimson would supplant Yale as the three-seed and avoid the home-field Big Red in the first round with a victory over the Bulldogs. Harvard lost to Cornell by one goal on March 5, and also fell by one to two-seed No. 15 Penn in double overtime on April 16. Four of the Crimson’s five defeats this season have come by one goal.

“We’ve had a number of close games,” Wojcik said. “Losing by a goal is frustrating. But a lot of those games, especially against high profile opponents, have shown that our team can play with anyone.”

Saturday also marks Senior Day for Harvard, and the team will say goodbye to seven members of the class of 2011, including All-American co-captain Dean Gibbons, who leads the squad with 49 points for the season. The group has gone 28-24 over the past four years.

“We’re going to honor the seniors before the game,” Wojcik said.  “This is a special class for me. Back when I was an assistant coach here, I recruited these guys. They all mean a lot to me.”

The senior class also has a strong supporting cast, punctuated by junior Jeff Cohen and Eipp, who have 29 and 22 points respectively. In net, sophomore goalie Harry Krieger boasts a .524 save percentage.

“I can’t imagine playing without these seniors,” Eipp said. “We definitely want to keep this season going.”

Yale is currently riding a five-game winning streak behind the play of senior Brian Douglass and Junior Matt Gibson. Douglass has 28 goals and 42 points on the season, including 14 during the streak.

Similarly, Gibson, who is second on the team with 32 points, has 20 since the streak started with a victory over Providence on April 5.

“They’re both really talented players,” Wojcik said. “Douglass really does it all; he’s the leader of their team and is really a complete player. Gibson, on the other hand, is their quarterback. They’re always looking for each other. Both have really good chemistry both with each other and with the rest of their team. We’re just going to do our best to try and limit their opportunities.”

The November equivalent of Harvard-Yale is a much larger event on campus, but cannot boast the national relevance in its sport that Saturday’s game does.

The Bulldogs are not only playing for a more secure seed in the Ivy Tournament, but also a potential bid to the NCAA tournament.

The stakes are slightly lower for the Crimson, as its only shot at the NCAA’s comes with the Ivy League Championship. But the potential to play spoiler to its biggest rival remains a primary motivator.

Especially after last year’s game, when Yale came back to win, 9-8, in New Haven.

“We’re coming back for redemption,” Eipp said. “We’re going to come out strong and hopefully come away with a win.”

—Staff writer Alexander Koenig can be reached at akoenig@college.harvard.edu.