BOSTON, Mass.—Harvard junior point guard David Giovacchini had a chance to send the Crimson’s game against Northeastern to overtime Friday night, but his leaning three-pointer came up short as Harvard (0-9) fell to the Huskies (5-4) 61-58.

Both teams seemed to be doing their best to lose the game down the stretch.

Northeastern point guard Jose Juan Barea missed two free throws with 6.3 seconds left with the Huskies leading by three to leave the Crimson with a chance to tie.

Junior captain Jason Norman pulled down the rebound on the second one, but, with Harvard out of timeouts, Giovacchini was forced to take the desperation shot.

“We had a play organized,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “It got a little disorganized as the pressure happened on Dave and I think he just did the best he could…He was the passer on the play.”

Barea had fouled Giovacchini with 24.3 seconds remaining. Giovacchini converted both ends of the resulting 1-and-1 to bring the Crimson within four.

With 32 seconds to play, Harvard had turned the ball over on a five-second violation when Giovacchini was unable to inbound the ball and could not call a timeout in time.

Giovacchini, who had seen just three minutes of action in the first half, didn’t enter again until sophomore point guard Michael Beal fouled out for the fifth time this season after picking up his fourth and fifth fouls in a 10-second span with under a minute to play.

The Crimson never led, although the game featured five ties.

The Huskies built a 10-point lead as Harvard suffered through a field-goal drought lasting 6:33 between a Beal layup and a bucket by sophomore forward Matt Stehle.

That dry spell came with junior forward Graham Beatty confined to the bench after picking up his fourth foul with 13:57 to play.

In fact, foul trouble plagued the Crimson’s starting big men all game long. Stehle picked up his second foul just 2:50 into the contest and didn’t play for the rest of the first half.

“Matt clearly has to learn how to play with one foul early in the game,” Sullivan said. “He really makes our team offense a lot easier…He’s had too many games for us right now where he’s only played half the game…He can’t be a 20-minute player.”

Losing Beatty and Stehle for long stretches left Harvard vulnerable in the middle, where Northeastern power forward Sylbrin Robinson, the America East Conference’s leading rebounder, pulled down 13 rebounds—eight of them on the offensive end—and blocked four shots.

“Thank God we got [their inside guys] in foul trouble early in the game and they didn’t play much in the first half,” Northeastern coach Ron Everhart said.