PROVIDENCE, R.I.--For 11 minutes here Saturday night, the Harvard men's basketball team played a tough, collapsing defense and forced Brown to shoot from outside.

The result: the cellar-dwelling Crimson hung within three points of the league-leading Bruins, 14-11.

But then, in Harvard Coach Pete Roby's words, "We broke down."

The result: a 67-46 Brown victory--the Bruins' largest victory margin over the Crimson in 40 years.

The loss dropped the cagers' record to 4-13 overall, 0-5 Ivy. Surprising Brown moved to 11-7 overall, 5-1 Ivy.

"We kept in mind what we needed to do to win," Roby said, "and for the first 10 minutes we did that defensively."

What the cagers needed to do defensively was shut down 6-ft., 9-in. Bruin center Jim Turner, who had burned Dartmouth for 37 points the previous night.

And after initial success against Turner, the senior big man burned the cagers as well, hitting for 20 points (on a sizzling 9-for-11 from the floor) and setting up numerous other hoops with his fine passing.

And while Turner was killing the Crimson at one end of the court, the cagers were clanging their own death knell at the other.

Harvard shot just 38.8 percent for the game, one of its worst shooting nights in a season filled with poor field goal performances.

"We missed opportunities offensively," Roby said. "We didn't shoot the ball. We haven't shot the ball all year."

The Crimson is averaging around 43 percent from the field this year, compared to the sweltering plus-50 percent it registered during the '84-'85 campaign.

Brown rolled to a 32-19 lead at the half on a 17-6 streak late in the half. Turner scored six points in the run, including a slam dunk off the offensive boards which ignited the 800 fans assembled at Marvel Gymnasium.

Mike Gielen and Tedd Evers started the second half for Harvard--a first for both freshmen--as regular guards Keith Webster and Pat Smith watched from the bench. Webster, the team's leading scorer, was not a starter for the second game in a row as Roby went with Neil Phillips in the backcourt.

The quintet of Gielen and Evers at guard, with Phillips, Kyle Dodson, and Bill Mohler up front, got off to a fast start in the second half, riding a 12-2 spurt to pull to within seven, 40-33, and force a Brown time-out.