On Saturday, the men’s lacrosse team (5-5, 0-3 Ivy) narrowly fell to No. 7 Harvard (9-1, 3-0), who is currently first in the Ivy League conference. The Bears led 9-8 going into the fourth quarter, but Bruno stumbled to the final whistle, and the game culminated in a disappointing 12-10 finish.
“We had so many chances we left off the board throughout the game, and especially late in the game,” Head Coach Jon Torpey said in an interview with Brown Athletics. “This team never gives up or backs down, but we need to finish the game.”
The defeat comes on the heels of a 14-20 loss to Princeton the previous weekend. Brown has yet to notch an Ivy League win this season and sits at 0-3 in Ivy play, having only faced the league’s top three teams — Harvard, Cornell and Princeton. Bruno holds the No. 7 seat in the league, only leading Dartmouth.
Going into Saturday, the Bears had the opportunity to seek revenge for Harvard’s last-minute victory over Brown in the 2025 regular-season finale.
The Crimson was the first to strike on Saturday with a goal in the second minute of the game. But Brown answered just a minute later, as attacker Brady O’Kane ’28 launched a long shot that bounced low and into the back of the net.
O’Kane’s attacks did not stop there. Just 44 seconds later, he snuck a shot inside the post from around the right side of the goal, earning the Bears a lead.
Attacker Jeremy Hopsicker ’26 was next to hit a hot streak, delivering two goals of his own. In the sixth minute and with Harvard goalie Graham Stevens crouched low to the ground, the Brown forward released a high shot from just outside the crease around Stevens. Less than two minutes later, Hopsicker received a deft pass from midfielder Marcus Wertheim ’26 and fired a rapid underhand shot to give the Bears a commanding 4-1 lead.
A few minutes later, Harvard attacker Teddy Malone sliced through Brown’s defense to deliver a second goal for the Crimson.
But unwilling to let their lead narrow, Bruno struck back. With zero seconds left on the shot clock and a defender on his back, attacker Jackson Wolfram ’27 delivered a hail-mary that bounced high into the net.
In the final three minutes of the quarter, Brown received a penalty, leaving them a man-down. Malone capitalized on the advantage to secure his second goal of the contest. Crimson midfielder Logan Turley quickly followed with an even-strength goal to cut Brown’s lead to 5-4.
Starting strong in the second, Harvard pulled ahead, 6-5, with two early goals. But Bruno refused to give up — seven minutes in, Hopsicker received a pinpoint pass from Wolfram on the left side and sent the ball behind his back into the goal for his seventh hat trick of the season.
For the next seven minutes, the game stalled before Harvard’s John Aurandt IV raced from midfield with three seconds left in the quarter and curled around the goal to score. The second quarter ended with a narrow 7-6 lead for Harvard.
The third quarter was marked by a tooth-and-nail fight between the teams to maintain slight leads. Brown quickly evened the score when attacker Preston Evans ’29 struck less than two minutes in. Finding a gap in the defense, he delivered a long high-to-low goal to bring the tally to 7-7.
Less than a minute later, Hopsicker delivered a remarkable behind-the-back shot over his left shoulder to put the Bears back in the driver’s seat. But Harvard bounced back just 44 seconds later to draw even at 8-8.
After three minutes, Wolfram gave the Bears another lead, making his second goal of the night with a high bouncer. Despite outshooting the Crimson 6-1 over the rest of the quarter, Brown failed to convert another score, and Bruno went into the final quarter leading by a narrow one-goal margin of 9-8.
As the fourth quarter began, Brown held on to the momentum. Wertheim extended the Bears’ lead to 10-8 with a long, straight shot into the back of the net.
But from there, Harvard seemed to have all the answers.
Malone completed a hat trick for the Crimson and quickly followed up with his fourth score of the afternoon to tie the game at 10-10. Over the next five minutes, Turley overpowered Brown’s defense, managing two more goals and a hat-trick of his own to bring Harvard’s lead to 12-10.
Refusing to give up, the Bears shot six times to Harvard’s zero in the final five minutes of the game. But each shot missed the net or was saved by Stevens — none managed to revive the Bears’ feeble fourth quarter.
“I can’t identify anything in particular that caused a momentum change in the fourth quarter,” Wolfram wrote in an email to The Herald. “I honestly felt we were in control and were going to win throughout the entirety of the game. I believed in my teammates.”
Despite the loss, he wrote that the team walked away knowing that when they are focused and work together, they are “as good as any team in the country.”
The Bears will look to improve their Ivy League record at 12 p.m. on Saturday when they host the league’s bottom-ranked Dartmouth (4-6, 0-3) at Stevenson-Pincince Field.
