Instead, the Minutemen responded with an offensive outburst of their own. Gedman sparked the UMass offense by hitting his second two-run homer of the game.

The Crimson didn’t do itself too many favors on defense, allowing two unearned runs before the end of the inning.

“It was just one of those crazy midweek games,” Franklin said. “We made a bunch of errors.”

But even after the five-run outburst, Harvard still had a one-run lead. Unfortunately for the Crimson, it couldn’t put together strings of hits like it had earlier in the game.

Before Harvard crossed home plate again, UMass took the lead with a three-run inning of its own in the bottom of the sixth, with RBI from Mike Donato and Peter Copa to put the Minutemen up by two.

The two teams continued to trade runs, as the Crimson was able to tie things back up with up with two runs in the top of the seventh, the first coming from junior right fielder Taylor Helgren, who sent home Albright. Harvard’s final RBI of the day came on a ground out from senior pinch hitter Dan Zailskas, who sent Way home to tie the game back up.

But just as in the fourth inning, UMass had the last work, scoring two more runs than the Crimson had in the top of the frame. This time, the Minutemen’s outburst was enough to give themselves a four-run lead that would hold until the end of the game.

Despite the four-run loss, Harvard remains optimistic that it can bounce back as it heads back into conference play this weekend.

“We’re not too worried,” Franklin said of the loss. “We feel like we have a lot of momentum going into Yale this weekend…I think we’ll be okay.”

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.