Harvard one-through-nine, a Murderer's Row in its own right, brings its monstrously successful run-and-gun lineup to Baton Rouge having scored 38 runs in its last four games--against Princeton and LeMoyne, ranked 20th and first nationally in ERA, respectively.

Forst and classmate Brain Ralph lead the way, Forst batting .409 with 61 hits and Ralph, despite missing a chunk of the season, hitting .373 with nine home runs and 32 RBI. Ralph is only one long ball away from tying Harvard's all-time record for homers in a season.

Sandwiched between them in the cleanup spot is Keck, who won the starting catching job last season but hit only .275, but earned first-team all-Ivy honors this season with a .383 average and 37 RBI. Keck also hit .464 in league contests, narrowly losing the Blair Bat crown to Yale's Tony Coyne.

"Regionals comes down to whatever you've got left at the end of the last game," Keck said. "That means the top team gets out, and it really proves who that team is."

The Crimson has the weapons--on the bump and in the batter's box--to give the Regional a jolt. For its graduating seniors and for the rest of team rapidly making a claim to the top-flight of college baseball, this weekend in Bayou country could be memorable indeed.

Notes

Joining Keck and Marcucci on the Ivy League's first team was Ralph, who hit five homers in 45 at-bats, while fielding 1.000. Vail, junior third baseman Hal Carey and junior rightfielder Andrew Huling were second-teamers, while basically the rest of the lineup--Forst, Duffell, Jamieson, senior leftfielder Aaron Kessler, senior designated hitter Brett Vankoski and junior second baseman Peter Woodfork--were honorable mentions.

The remainder of the South II Regional includes three-seed Tulane, the Conference USA champions, four-seed Southwest Louisiana, the Sun Belt winners, and six-seed Nicholls State, at 28-32 the only sub-.500 team in the entire field of 48, which received the Southland Conference's automatic bid.