The Crimson’s six-game winning streak came to an end on Friday when the Patriots won in straight sets.

“I thought we played hard,” Lothman said. “But we were missing a little bit of the necessity that the other teams had, particularly [George Mason]. They played like they had to win.”

George Mason (6-7, 4-2) played its strongest set last, carving its greatest lead of 15-7 and forcing head coach Brian Baise to call his first time-out for the Crimson. The Patriots held on to their lead, winning, 25-19, and taking the match.

“They served an incredible game, they had us back on our heels most of the night,” Lothman said. “By the end of the match, we were keeping up with them defensively, but we were still fighting from behind offensively.”

Harvard put up a fight, scoring 20 points in the first and 19 in the second and third frames, but Madden thought his team was not at their offensive best.

Lothman put up 26 assists, the most for Harvard, while George Mason’s senior Javier Perez contributed 34 for the Patriots.

Defense for the Crimson also proved to fall short to George Mason, which had 8.5 team blocks, while Harvard only collected three.

Going forward, Madden knows what his team needs to work on before it faces MIT at home on Tuesday.

“We could definitely work on our serve receive [and] hitting out of system balls; these two things hurt us this weekend,” Madden said.