Having lost this season’s first three games against the University of Massachusetts, the Harvard men’s water polo team finally defeated the Minutemen 6-5 yesterday to cap an impressive weekend at the Northern Division Championships at Brown University.

The UMass game was the highlight of the weekend for the Crimson (23-9, 7-3

Collegiate Water Polo Association) and helped the team to earn third place in the tournament.

Harvard had not beaten UMass in over five years.

The Crimson was missing one of its starters going into the game, as senior 2-meter Sean Cheng suffered a blow to the face that required four stitches to close a cut in his eyelid. Despite the injury to a key player and a loss to Queens earlier in the tournament, Harvard was able to bounce back for the historic win.

“We were really happy that we came back from a poor performance,” junior Alex Fisher said. “For us it was a pride thing to come out and play hard after playing badly against Queens.”

Harvard lost to Queens, 10-5, in its third match of the tournament. In the Saturday afternoon game, the Crimson came out flat and never recovered from its bad start. Despite the early gap, the Crimson fought fiercely for the rest of the game, setting the tone for the UMass game.

The first game of the weekend was a huge win for the Crimson. Friday night Harvard faced Brown, who hosted the tournament. The crowd was hostile, rooting its team on.

There was also a bit of hostility in the pool. Brown took a game off of Harvard, 10-8, on October 20, but Harvard put any rumor of its inferiority to rest with a 10-1 thrashing of the Bears last weekend.

Brown came out stronger this weekend.

“We didn’t play our best game, but it was still good to beat a team that

was really fired up,” Fisher said. “The win secured a spot in Easterns, which will be held in two weeks at Princeton.”

“If we had lost, we would have lost our bid to go to the Eastern Conference Championship,” Cheng said. “It was a do or die situation. It was against Brown, who has traditionally been our rival, so it felt all the better.”

The Saturday morning game against the United States Merchant Marine Academy was easy for the Crimson.

Harvard earned an easy win, even thought it suffered the loss of Cheng for the rest of the tournament.

After the mixed day on Saturday, the game against UMass was a perfect way to rebound. The Minutemen took an early 2-0 lead before Harvard was able to score its first goal. At the midway point, the minutemen lead by one tally, 3-2.

In the third quarter Harvard scored three unanswered goals to take a 5-3 lead. UMass cut the lead to one twice in the fourth quarter, but Harvard was able to hold the lead in the end and earn the win.

Junior Theo Ludwick led the attack with two goals in the game.

“We came out strong and our defense was impregnable,” Cheng said. “We played really tough, and they had no offense because of what we were doing on defense. We showed everybody that we can beat this team. It was our time to come through.”

The team was happy that it finally defeated UMass after coming so close many times this season, but this might not be the final match between the two teams this season. Harvard could face the Minutemen at Easterns in two weeks.

“Everyone was pretty excited that we won, but we all know that two weeks from now is what really matters,” Fisher said.

The team, which is by far the most successful that Harvard has ever had, will face either Princeton or Navy at the Eastern Championship, both of whom Harvard has defeated in the past two years.