Yesterday's game presented a chance for redemption for the Harvard baseball team. After losing the Ivy League Championships to Princeton last weekend in a two-game sweep, a season-ending non-conference matchup with Bentley would have allowed Harvard to close out its very successful season with a win.

Would have.

Sloppy defense in the first inning spotted the Falcons an early 2-0 lead, and though the Crimson (23-17, 14-6 Ivy) briefly tied the game at three runs, Bentley (19-16) won out in the end by a 4-3 margin.

Harvard's best chance for victory came in the seventh inning, after a one-out double by freshman third baseman Peter Woodfork tied the game and advanced another runner to third.

But Bentley closer Mike Mason came in and shut the door, striking out captain Marc Levy and forcing senior Dennis Doble to pop out to end the threat.

"That was the ballgame right there," Harvard coach Joe Walsh said. "Levy needs to make contact to put the ball in play and get us going, and [Doble got] a lot of curve balls, and he got underneath one a little bit and flew it out. That was a big opportunity for us to bust open the ball game. Every game you get an opportunity, and we just didn't take advantage of it."

Bentley, on the other hand, took what it had. The Falcons stranded only four runners on the day--none on third base--and made do on only eight hits, one fewer than the Crimson.

At no time was this more evident than in the first inning. With one out, Falcon Steve Patten drew a walk off of freshman Andrew Duffell--one of only three he allowed, though two of them scored. Patten moved to third when Duffell's pickoff throw got past senior first baseman Scott Parrot, and then Steve DeMartinis drove him in with a double just past a diving Levy in left.

DeMartinis scored on a single by Dave Tallent when Doble couldn't handle the throw from sophomore centerfielder Brian Ralph, and although Harvard ended the inning by nailing Tallent when he tried for second, the damage was done.

"I started to get behind hitters a little bit," Duffell said. "That's basically it--when you get behind hitters, you have to throw your fastball over, and they'll probably hit it. [Walsh] has been telling us all year that you gotta get ahead of the hitters--so they have to hit my pitch. But they were hitting the pitches that they were looking to see."

Duffell settled down well after that, with a single run in the third inning being the only Falcon scoring until the eighth. But the Harvard offense didn't fare much better.

The Crimson did get runners on base. However, that's where they were likely to stay, as Harvard stranded eight on the day.

It also didn't help when two Harvard runners were picked off in the first two innings. Freshman Hal Carey led off the game--and a 3-for-5 day--with a double down the left-field line, but took off for third on a pickoff move and was tagged out in the rundown. Ralph had a similar fate befall him at first base next inning.

Thanks to these mental errors, Harvard was held scoreless through the first three innings. But in the fourth, freshman Brett Vankoski drove home Doble with a double and later came home himself on a single by junior Mike Hochanadel, cutting the lead to 3-2.

Three innings later, the Crimson equalized the game on Woodfork's double. But Mason came in, and the only base runner the Crimson got in the next 2 2-3 innings was on an error.