Talk about saving the best for last. Playing in its final regular season game of 2009, the men’s soccer team notched its first Ivy League victory on Saturday against Columbia (4-12-1, 2-5 Ivy), thanks to senior Matt Bouraee’s game-winning goal in overtime. With the win, Cornell (6-6-5, 1-3-3 Ivy) finishes at .500 for the first time since 2001 –– the minimum requirement for becoming NCAA at-large bid eligible.

When the men’s soccer team met Dartmouth in New Haven on Saturday, the two teams had very different things at stake. The Red was searching for its first Ivy League win while the Green was hoping to remain in contention for the Ivy League championship. After goals from Andrew Olsen and Lucky Mkosana propelled Dartmouth to a 2-0 victory, Cornell is still looking for that first win against a team from the Ancient Eight.

“Athletic competition.” “Tough game.” “Battle.” These are the types of phrases used by members of the men’s soccer team to describe Cornell’s Princeton matchup on Saturday — a 1-1 tie after a double-overtime slugfest in the New Jersey rain on Halloween night.

Despite cruising to a respectable 5-3-2 record in non-conference play, the men’s soccer team remains in pursuit of that elusive first Ivy win. Having endured a tough week of practice –– one senior forward Matt Bouraee described as “our hardest since preseason” –– the Red hopes its efforts will translate to a “W” when the team travels to Princeton, N.J., tomorrow for a 7 p.m. rendezvous with the Tigers.

“We’ve done well out of conference, but in the Ivy League we haven’t been too fortunate, even though we’ve played very well,” said Bouraee, who is second on the team in scoring with three goals. “We just want to come out with positive results and finish strong.”

The men’s soccer team is now scoreless in its last 218 minutes of play, stretching over a three-game span. The most recent 90 minutes of the current scoring drought came in Saturday’s 1-0 loss at home to No. 18 Brown when Bears freshman forward Thomas McNamara scored in the 72nd minute to give his team the victory.

After starting his first game of the year on Tuesday in a 0-0 draw against Lafayette, Red freshman goaltender Rick Pflasterer got the nod once again for Saturday evening’s match. Pflasterer was forced into action early, making all of his game total five saves in the first half.

This is a busy stretch for the men’s soccer team, as the squad will have played three games from Saturday to Saturday by this weekend. Playing its last nonconference game of 2009 last night under the lights of Berman Field, the Red (5-4-4, 0-1-2 Ivy) received some mixed results, as the Cornell defense held visiting Lafayette (7-5-2) to a scoreless tie. The visiting team, however, outshot the Red, 20-13.

“There was definitely a lot of action,” said Cornell head coach Jaro Zawislan. “It was 0-0, but that game could have been 3-3.”

Despite leading Yale, 3-2, with four minutes remaining in the match, the men’s soccer team is still searching for its first Ivy League win. After scoring three straight second half goals to overcome a 2-0 first-half deficit, the Red then coughed up its lead by allowing two goals in the last four minutes of the game, losing to Yale, 4-3.

Check Monday's edition of The Cornell Daily Sun for more coverage

Fordham 39, Football 27

Fordham quarterback John Skelton picked apart Cornell's defense on Saturday afternoon, throwing for 421 yards and five touchdowns on 21-of-27 attempts. Jason Caldwell caught four of the touchdown passes, a school record, but Asa Lucas had the play of the game. Facing a third-and-nine from his own two-yard line on the first snap of the second quarter, Skelton found Lucas about 40 yards downfield, and the wideout took it to the end zone to put the Rams up, 13-3.

On a day when neither team could get much going through the air, Harvard's ground game picked up the slack, rushing for 251 yards and all four touchdowns and giving up only 62 to a struggling Cornell running attack that has averaged just 57 yards over its last three games. The win boosted Harvard (3-1, 2-0 Ivy), the preseason favorite to win the Ivy League, to the top of the conference standings, while dropping Cornell (2-2, 1-1) into a fourth-place tie with Yale.

Long-time Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has said that the key to a team’s success is the ability to move on after a loss: “We say we will never lose two in a row.” After a 2008 season in which the men’s soccer team registered loss after disheartening loss en route to a 1-15 record, the Red has managed to follow Coach K’s creed to the letter in 2009, already quadrupling its win total from 2008 in the process.