First, over spring break, the Crimson battled nobody in a 13-6 loss to seventh-ranked Duke in Raleigh, N.C., a loss which ironically only seemed to affirm the team's top-20 status.

And second, in one of the veritable highlights of the season, the team beat a solid Vermont squad, 10-7.

From there no out, though, as the team dug into the heart of its Ivy League schedule, any improvement was almost strictly intrinsic, undetectable in scores or wins and losses.

Immediately the team dropped four games in a row--to Brown, 16-7; eventual national champion Princeton, 16-6; Massachusetts, 18-17; and Yale, 14-9.

Then, after squeaking past New Hampshire, 11-10, and creaming Cornell, 16-6, the Crimson ended its season with losses to C.W. Post, 11-9, and Dartmouth, 12-11.

The team's efforts brought it a seventh-place finish in the league, a finish slightly deceiving because of an unusually successful reservoir of talent in the league. Princeton, for example, the eventual NCAA champion, could only muster a second-place finish behind Brown.

"Of course, we would've like to finish a little bit higher, and we had our share of problems--particularly on defense for a good part of the year, but we're pleased," Porter says. "The league was really tough, and, aside from that, it was a good transition year. That is exactly what we had hoped for."

MEN'S LACROSSE

Record: 5-8

Ivy League: 2-4

Key Players: Mike Eckert (6 goals, 14 assists), Chris Wojcik (15 goals, 5 assists), Steve Gaffney (14 goals, 4 assists)

Seniors: Mike Agrillo, Matt Camp, Charlie Gay, Mike Porter