Bruins Lead Crimson in N.E. Tourney

PROVIDENCE R.I.--Incredible may be but there it was on the scoreboard Eleven minutes had been played, and the Harvard water polo team was giving the seven time-defending New England champion. Brown its toughest regional contest of the season.

Despite the exhortations of nearly 100 lans at Brown's Smith Swimming Center the Bruns lead by just one goal with three minutes tell in the first hall Saturday night while the Crimson had the ball and a chance to tie it at face.

But Harvard failed to score on that opportunity And in fact they failed to score for the rest of the game. The home learn simply turned on the juice gradually breaking the game open with an awesome display of water polo skills.

When the root was complete the scoreboard read 14-4 and Brown had effectively clinched first place in the preliminary rounds of the New England championship Combined with a sweep of their five round robin rivals two week and at Boldgen Pool the Bruns 5.0 showing this weekend gives them a top seeding in N.E tournament finals in two weeks at MIT.

Harvard which beat every team but Brown both this weekend and two weeks ago advanced to the final slang with MIT and UMass. Beating every team but Brown is fast becoming the Crimson pattern in regional competition. The Crimson has a tight hold on the number-two ranking in New England easily lending off other rivals, but always in the last several years has lost to the Burns.

This weekend at Providence, Harvard clobbed Yale. 15.8. UMass 15.9 and MIT, 13.7 Only a sloppy performance against Columbia produced an 11.9 score. Several Crimson players went on offensive rampages. especially junior Steve Munatones who scored six goals against showled in a team leading 21 goals in the two days.

Still the one enormous obstacle to regional supremacy, which for a while Saturday Harvard seemed tantalizing close to burring remains Brown may have started out less tired than the Crimson Saturday night having played lower games thanks to a forfeit by Yale that morning.

But Harvard Coach Steve Pike said he thought Brown would have been just as strong had to play then best guys versus Yale to win whole we have to play out top eight to 10 guys every game to win. They just have so much more depth." Brown's depth was displayed Sunday morning With Bruin Coach Ed Reed letting all his seniors sleep late Brown annihilated UMass 17.2

Still it was Brown's big guns that put the Crimson away. With the Smith Center's large water polo court to emphasize the Bruins speed the hosts repeatedly victimized Harvard on picture-perfect break always. Coach Reed felt the scare his squad received in the early going whipped it into top form. Because Harvard is capable of playing as well they're capable of forcing us to shape up in case we start to make mistakes.

Brown's successful weekend leaves its season record at 20-2, while Harvard is 11-4. with its next game set for 8:30 Tuesday night at Blodgett against Notre Dante. New England Water Polo Championship Preliminaries Combined standings of Oct. 9-10 at Harvard and Oct. 23-4 at Brown   W  L  r  Pts. Brown  10  0  0  20 Harvard  8  2  0  20 MIT  5  4  1  11 UMass  4  5  1  9 Columbia  1  9  0  2 Yale  1  9  0  2