Harvard's freshman baseball squad ran into a few problems in the early going yesterday against Northeastern, and never recovered. The team suffered a 7-5 defeat at the hands of the Husky pups.

Northeastern picked up all seven of its runs in the first four innings as the Pup batters banged out 11 hits off Crimson starter Steve Maislin. Only three of those runs were earned, however, as the beleaguered Maislin could have sued his squad for non-support. Harvard committed five costly errors in the contest.

Ron Sen came on in relief of Maislin and pitched a strong final five innings. Sen shut out the Huskies on two hits the rest of the way. Harvard rallied with four runs in the sixth in an attempt to give Sen the victory.

Tom Joyce opened the inning with a walk, and came home on an RBI double off the bat of Paul Mahoney. Mahoney later scored on a passed ball to narrow the gap to 7-3.

After a single by Doug Baumgarten, a double by Chris Vejnoska and a walk to Bob Murray to load the bases, Andy Poupolo drove in the fourth run with a base hit. The rally ended short as Mike Carl's sacrifice fly made it 7-5.

Below .500

The freshmen are now 3-4 overall, with other losses to Brown, Yale and MIT, all by a single run. Coach Bob Hughes's squad picked up wins against Andover, Tufts and Massachusetts Bay Community College. The next game is Saturday against Dartmouth.