By PABLO S. TORRE

Crimson Staff Writer

After an uncharacteristic 6-0 loss to No. 4 Duke on Sunday, the Harvard field hockey team could have used a win over No. 11 Northeastern before heading into the meat of its Ivy schedule.

The Crimson (5-5), as is usual this season, came as close as it gets.

Harvard fell 3-2 to the Huskies (12-1) last night in a game that was decided on penalty strokes after both teams battled through 30 minutes of overtime.

Since beating then-No. 15 Connecticut on Sept. 22, the Crimson has dropped four games in a row—twice reaching at least one overtime, and another time recording a 1-0 defeat.

“I know it was a loss but it was a kind of a moral victory for us,” junior forward Gretchen Fuller said. “It puts us in a really great spot going into the rest of season.”

The scoreboard was frozen at 1-1 until Northeastern’s Rachel Wikles collected her third goal of the year with less than four minutes remaining in regulation at 66:49.

But then came the Harvard response.a

Senior forward Beverlie Ting converted a shot from sophomore back Devon Shapiro with under two minutes remaining at 68:20 to regain the tie.

“This was the best team effort we’ve been able to put together so far,” Fuller said.

That effort, resulting in a late 2-2 stalemate, set the stage for overtime. But a half-hour and two overtimes later—100 cumulative minutes of field hockey—the same 2-2 margin remained.

“The overtimes were amazing,” Fuller said. “People were playing their hearts out. It went back and forth. They’d have an opportunity, we’d have an opportunity.”

As per the rules in field hockey, there is no third overtime. The game was instead sent to penalty strokes, the sport’s equivalent of a shootout in hockey or soccer.

Defending the cages in the best-of-five strokeoff were freshman netminder Kelly Knoche and Northeastern frosh Colleen Duffy, both of whom impressively pace their conferences in goals against average.