A young and talented Harvard hockey team is taking quite a few lumps these days. After picking up losses to Providence and Boston University within the past two weeks, the Crimson traveled to Brown on Saturday night and picked up Lump Number Three in a hard-fought 5-3 loss to the Bruins.

The game at Providence dropped the Crimson's ECAC record to 3-3, and things probably won't get any easier this week. The miserably tough pre-Christmas schedule reaches its climax with an encounter against highly ranked New Hampshire Wednesday night at Watson.

In a situation reminiscent of last Wednesday's B.U. confrontation, a struggling Brown team was looking toward the Harvard game as a chance to turn around a somewhat disappointing (1-3) start this year. And just as with the Terriers, the inexperienced Crimson filled the bill.

Since belated comebacks are now the byword for Harvard hockey, it was not surprising when Bruin Bill Gilligan fired one past Brian Petrovek to open the game scoring at 4:21 of the first. Less than four minutes later, wing Bob McIntosh stole the puck and waltzed in for an unassisted goal at 8:15, making it 2-0.

Harvard defenseman Jim Trainor answered back at 10:12, taking a pass from Jon Garrity via Gene Purdy and putting it past Bruin netminder Kevin McCabe to cut the lead in half. Early in the second period, Harvard managed to tie it up.

Center Bill Hozack did the honors, converting a Bill Horton pass into a goal at 5:44 to put Harvard in the thick of the important game. Brown's Skip Stovern thinned things out, temporarily, with a score at 13:03 to make it 3-2.

Crimson defenseman Bobby Fowkes followed 12 seconds later with a breakaway, knotting the game for the final time. It was mostly downhill from there, however, and when Bill Lukewich rammed one home seventy seconds later, the string had just about run out.

Gilligan poked home his second goal of the night early in the third period to finish off the scoring. A hard-pressed Petrovek finished with 27 saves, one more than his Brown counterpart McCabe.