“I struggled a little bit early on, but as the game went on I was able to settle down,” Rubin said. “In the last couple innings I threw the ball pretty well.”

One bright spot for Harvard came in the top of the eighth, when sophomore outfielder Brandon Kregel stepped to the plate and smacked a line drive over the left field fence, past the Crimson bullpen for his second hit of the day. The solo shot was Kregel’s second on the year, a team best.

After an explosion of early offense, with a total of ten runs scored in the first three innings, both teams combined for only two tallies in the remaining six innings.

Harvard had trouble figuring out the Huskies pitching throughout the game. Northeastern starter James Mulry went seven innings, allowed one run (zero earned), and struck out eight.

But some Crimson batters were still able to post solid days at the plate. Link, the reigning Ivy League Freshman of the Week, continued his hot hitting by going 2-for-3 while scoring a run.

“It was definitely a great honor,” Link said. “I wasn’t really thinking about it as I was playing. If you have a good weekend it’s definitely nice to get rewarded for what you’re doing, but basically I don’t get too high or too low. I’m not going to let it affect the way I play.”

In addition to Kregel, freshman third baseman Mitch Klug and junior shortstop Carlton Bailey each notched two hits. But those performances would not be enough to pull Harvard back into the game.

“We struggled a bit out of the gates, and we got down early,” Rubin said. “In games prior to this we were able to come back from big deficits, but today we just couldn’t pull it off.”

—Staff writer David Steinbach can be reached at dsteinbach@college.harvard.edu.