It's a good measure of how much Coach Joe Walsh and the Harvard baseball team have achieved in the last four years that the team saw a season that ended in the NCAA tournament as a disappointment.

In four years, Walsh has rebuilt a once-faltering program, which finished 10-25 under Coach Leigh Hogan in 1995, into an Ivy juggernaut. The Crimson has tallied three consecutive league crowns and a 64-16 league record while storming three times into the NCAA field.

But unlike its trips in 1997 and 1998, when it grabbed unlikely wins against high-caliber competition in UCLA, Stetson, Nicholls State and Tulane, the Crimson (28-20, 16-4 Ivy) came away empty-handed in 1999.

Chilled after a 17-day layoff between its last regular-season game and the start of regional play, Harvard made an inconspicuous exit from the tournament, mustering just two runs on nine hits as No. 12 Pepperdine and Virginia Commonwealth delivered a one-two knockout combination. The Crimson batted just .141 in regional play.

"The general consensus was that we weren't just there to look at teams like Pepperdine and USC and say 'Wow, we're on the same field with them,'" said senior righthander Garett Vail, who took the loss to VCU. "We had shots to beat both of those teams, and the fact that we didn't win does mean that we kind of stepped back."

Waves ace Jay Adams (11-2) scattered four hits in a complete-game 4-0 shutout in the opener, while an eighth-inning error by sophomore right fielder Scott Carmack allowed the go-ahead run to score in a 3-2 decision to the Rams, sealing Harvard's first winless trip to the NCAA tournament since 1978.

"We struggled offensively," Vail said. "We didn't execute at the plate, we missed bunts and wasted at-bats that could have turned innings into big innings."

The Crimson earned a reputation for giant-killing with its tournament wins in 1997 and 1998 and made believers of thousands of surrogate fans in college baseball strongholds like Oklahoma State and LSU.

But two pitchers' duels--usually the Crimson's strong suit--resulted in two meek losses and a step backward on the path to national recognition.

In Game 1, Adams struck out eight and walked one and did not allow a Harvard baserunner past second base as he mixed a fastball and a splitter to keep the Crimson bats off rhythm.

Four singles, a pair by junior first baseman Erik Binkowski and one apiece by Carmack and senior catcher Jason Keck, was all Harvard could string together in its worst offensive performance of the season--its first shutout since the season opener at Charleston Southern.

"We had two great pitchers out there tonight," Walsh said. "To play nine innings in two hours, and 15 minutes really says something about the pitching. We hadn't seen a kid like that with a splitter like that all season long. He was tough. Real tough."

Although sophomore righthander John Birtwell, the Ivy League Pitcher of the Year who finished 4-5 with a team-best 2.83 ERA, battled over 7.1 innings, allowing just three earned runs, his mates stuck him with another hard-luck loss, one of several he suffered this year because of meager run support.

"I was happy that Coach gave me the opportunity to stay in the game," Birtwell said. "The guys played well behind me. Some days, the bats don't come around, but I'm still really confident in our hitters."

Game 2 was a tighter affair, and Carmack was central, playing both hero and goat. The sophomore, who was Harvard's lone representative on the All-Tournament Team, drove in the Crimson's only two runs of the tournament with a two-run home run off VCU winner Jason Dubois (10-2) in the fourth that made it 2-0.