Men's Soccer Dominates Cornell at Home

­Harvard could have packed its bags after the first two minutes and 44 seconds of its game Saturday afternoon, as the first goal of the game proved to be the only goal the Crimson needed as it cruised to a dominating 4-0 victory over Ivy foe Cornell. Harvard (5-3-2, 1-0-1 Ivy) extended its undefeated streak to four games while the Big Red (0-9-2, 0-2-0) dropped its second consecutive Ancient Eight game and has yet to pick up a victory so far this season.

“We came prepared and the players played one of those complete games where from the beginning to the end, it was good, simple play, good intensity, good fight, good defending.” Harvard coach Pieter Lehrer said. “It was overall our best performance.”

After falling behind early in recent games, the Crimson finally got off to its desired start against Cornell. Harvard pressed high from the get go, dominating possession and pinning the Big Red into its own third before opening the scoring just three minutes into the game.

Senior forward Jake Freeman gained possession in the midfield and set it to junior midfielder Sam Brown, who played a through ball to sophomore forward Cesar Farias. With three Cornell defenders around him, Farias–who missed the game against Yale due to an accumulation of yellow cards–calmly slotted the ball down low past Big Red keeper Ryan Shellow after the goalie prematurely came out of his box.

The game quickly devolved into a scrappy midfield battle, as both teams spent the majority of their time looking to create opportunities but were only able to register one shot each before Harvard doubled its lead.

“Coming in we knew they were going to be a team that just fought...battled, played a lot in the air and scrapped.” Freeman said. “We knew whether it was going to be playing on the ground or playing balls over the top and just fighting we were going to grind through 90 minutes.”

Junior midfielder Christian Sady’s over the top through ball found its way to Freeman, who broke the offside trap and controlled the ball with his chest, allowing it to take a bounce before chipping it past Shellow for his fifth goal of the season. The Crimson could have added two more in the span of the next 10 minutes but was unable to spring the offside trap, as the Cornell backline barely managed to step up on time.

Harvard continued its onslaught in the 35th minute as Sady was ruled to have scored an Olympic-style goal from a corner kick following moments of confusion in the Big Red box. Sady swung his corner kick into the box, where it was skimmed Shellow’s glove on its way to the goal. Though a Cornell defender seemingly saved it off the line, starting a sequence of deflections in the box, the ball was judged to have crossed the line. Originally ruled an own goal, the score was eventually given to Sady.

It was relatively straightforward for the Crimson, as the team continued to deny the Big Red any fluidity in the midfield and continually frustrated the Cornell attack. Freeman put the finishing touches in the 68th minute, as junior defender Justin Crichlow’s throw-in was redirected in the box by senior defender Daniel Smith to Freeman, who poked it in for the his second of the game.

With two goals and an assists, the senior moved to 16 points in the season, top of the Ancient Eight among all players.

“It’s great to help my team and if it leads to wins that’s the most important thing but it’s good to see four up there regardless of who scores them so that’s what it’s all about.” Freeman said.

The win kept Harvard in a four-way tie with Brown, Columbia, and Dartmouth atop the Ivy League with four points each going into a critical stretch of five games on the road, including games against conference contenders Brown, Dartmouth and Princeton. Though the team heads into a tough road, Lehrer insists the team will take each game at a time and not deviate by thinking of the big picture.

“You have to create [momentum] every moment.” Lehrer said. “The more you have lulls of focusing on something different or something out of your control, the less you have momentum. For us, momentum is how good you focus on the next most important thing.”

—Staff writer Julio C. Fierro can be reached at julio.fierro@thecrimson.com