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Around the Ivies: men's soccer

Eight sides turn their attention to the midpoint of their conference schedules. Six of these teams are within a single win of the Ivy League lead. With the regular season championship and the coveted NCAA tournament bid that follows up for grabs, let’s see how the Ancient Eight stacks up.

  1. Harvard (8-3-1 overall, 2-0-1 Ivy League): The Crimson’s last loss came at St. John’s on Sept. 13. Unbeaten through the last nine contests, the league leaders have outscored opponents 24-14. Interestingly enough, the NCAA’s Rating Percentage Index only ranks this side sixth out of the Ivy teams, due in part to the relative weakness of its schedule thus far. Harvard’s 218 shots are a league best by a very large margin (Princeton ranks second with 159).
  2. Dartmouth: A scoring margin of seven goals-for and four goals-against gives the Big Green the Ancient Eight's best in-league differential. By virtue of a strong schedule, this side boasts the conference's best RPI, coming in at 37thnationally. Senior forward Alex Adelabu has taken 26 shots, scoring a team high of five goals. Dartmouth’s unbeaten streak of eight is one less than their Cambridge, Mass., rivals.
  3. Penn (6-6, 2-1): A strong start for last year’s champions could not sustain the Quakers in their home conference opener against Columbia. Holding a 1-0 lead at halftime, Penn surrendered a pair of second-half goals to the visiting Lions. This side’s offense boasts two of the top five Ivy League scorers.
  4. Princeton (6-3-3, 1-1-1): Characteristic of the Ivy League’s parity, little separates Princeton from the sides above and below it in terms of demonstrated quality, save the sheer explosiveness displayed by Princeton’s offensive duo of senior Cam Porter and junior Tom Sanner. These forwards rank first and second in goals scored among Ivy Leaguers.
  5. Columbia (4-5-1, 1-1-1): In a recent Spectrum, the Spectator's blogging arm, contributor Saranna Rotgard wrote the following regarding her experience attending last weekend’s drawn fixture between Columbia and Princeton: “I don’t have a deeper understanding of human existence after attending a soccer game, but the trip was not in vain.” Should the Lions continue their form, further trips to the school’s distant athletic fields may not be at all in vain.
  6. Brown (3-4-5, 1-1-1): While ranking second-worst among Ivy League sides in scoring, Bruno has held opponents to a second-best mark of .99 goals per game. Though this statistic is somewhat arbitrary, Brown leads all teams in yellow cards acquired with 16. No player on this squad has managed more than three goals during the 2014 campaign.
  7. Cornell (8-4-1, 1-2): Junior Zach Zagorski, an all-Ivy honorable mention from last season, has been the league’s premier goalkeeper. His save percentage of .878 ties him for fifth in the NCAA’s Division I. Champions two years ago, this side has seen its title hopes severely hindered by consecutive one-goal losses to Ivy rivals Penn and Harvard.
  8. Yale (1-9-2, 0-3): Two overtime periods were required for the Bulldogs to pick up their first win of the season: a 1-0 home victory over Temple University. Still, according to the NCAA’s RPI ranking, Yale ranks within the bottom 10 Division I teams in the nation, just behind Houston Baptist while edging out Gardner-Webb University.

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