Charles Nailen/The Hoya Walid Hajj cradles the ball on one of his attacks. He led all Georgetown scorers with four goals in the 12-11 victory Saturday.

It has not always been pretty, but the Hoyas continue to get the job done. For the third week in a row, the No. 3 Georgetown men’s lacrosse team pulled out a one-goal victory, this time against Brown, by the score of 12-11. They played before a crowd of 850 Saturday afternoon at Stevenson Field in Providence, R.I.

“Anytime you go on the road, it’s a little more of a challenge,” Georgetown Head Coach Dave Urick said. “We didn’t have what we needed to put them away at the end of the third quarter.”

This victory comes after 4-3 and 6-5 wins over No. 16 Navy and No. 10 Duke, respectively, in the last two weekends. With the win, Georgetown improved to 7-0 in 2003, two victories away from matching its best start of all time, which occurred just last year. Brown fell to 2-6 on the season and has now lost five straight games.

Although in previous weeks it was the Hoya defense that stepped up while the offense sputtered, Saturday, the offense posted one if its highest scoring outputs of the season, while the defense surrendered more than 10 goals for the first time in 2003. Junior midfielder Walid Hajj led Georgetown with a career-high four goals and senior attackman Mike Hammer netted three for the Hoyas.

“I don’t think Walid was real crazy about the way he played against Navy last week,” Urick said. “He came back with a four-goal effort. It shows what kind of character her has.”

The Bears were kept in the game thanks largely to the play of senior attackman Jon Thompson. In last year’s 16-6 blowout by the Hoyas at Harbin Field, Thompson had one of his worst games of the season, scoring just two goals. Saturday, however, was a different story. The usually solid Hoya defense could not handle Thompson, who broke out for a career-high seven goals.

“He’s a strong kid,” Urick said. “He brought it hard to the goal every time.”

The Hoyas outshot the Bears 16-8 in the first quarter, but Brown was able to keep pace the rest of the way as it was outshot only 44-39 on the day. For one of the first times this season, the Hoyas did not control the face-off circle. The Bears won 16-of-26 faceoffs, including seven of eight in the fourth quarter. Brown controlled 38 ground balls compared to 34 by Georgetown.

Brown opened the scoring just 27 seconds after the opening face-off as Thompson found the net for the first of his seven goals. Georgetown was able to bounce back from the slow start, however, as Hammer scored once and Hajj twice before the end of the quarter. But Thompson would also score twice more in the first, and the game was tied 3-3 after one quarter.

Brown then opened up its biggest lead of the game at 5-3 with two goals in the first five minutes of the second quarter. Georgetown then went on a run of its own before the half ended, though, getting goals from senior attackman Jordan Vettoretti, Hammer and Hajj to take a 6-5 lead going into the locker room.

It looked like the Hoyas were ready to pull away in the opening minutes of the third quarter. Graduate student attackman Phil Vincenti began the scoring for Georgetown in the second half and was followed by goals from Hajj and Vettoretti as Georgetown increased its lead to 9-5 after six unanswered goals. Thompson scored his fifth goal of the game to cut the lead to 9-6, but senior midfielder Trevor Walker responded with a goal in the closing seconds to give Georgetown a 10-6 lead and seemingly all the momentum entering the final quarter of the game.

But the Bears were not ready to give up yet. They scored four of the first five goals in the quarter, including a sixth goal from Thompson, to narrow the Hoya lead to just 11-10. Brown then had a golden opportunity to tie the score when it had a two-man breakaway, but Georgetown sophomore goalie Rich D’Andrea made a diving stick save to preserve the Georgetown lead. Junior attack Neal Goldman added an insurance goal for Georgetown with 1:53 remaining in the game. Thompson scored for the seventh and final time with 56 seconds left to play, but it was not enough. Georgetown was able to run out the clock and hold on for the victory.

The Hoyas return to action when they play host to No. 11 Loyola Saturday. Face-off is set for 1 p.m. at Harbin Field.

“There’s a lot of lacrosse left for everybody,” Urick said. “The team that will come in here Saturday will have a lot of motivation.”