What hitting slump?

Rounding out a week in which it played 12 games in nine days, the Crimson (18-12, 10-2 Ivy) roughed up Red Rolfe Division pretender Yale with a four-game sweep at O'Donnell Field, scoring 43 runs on 49 hits against a freshman-heavy Bulldog rotation.

Junior first baseman Erik Binkowski led the charge, going 7-for-16 on the weekend, including two home runs and 11 RBI, while senior center fielder Andrew Huling went 8-for-16, knocking in nine runs and scoring six. Huling also saved at least three runs with dazzling plays in the outfield.

He leads the Crimson with a .406 batting average, five home runs and 38 RBI.

The sweep allowed Harvard to maintain a first-place tie with Brown (18-11, 10-2), which swept a four-game set from Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H. The Crimson will meet the Bears for four in Providence next weekend.

Yale (12-23, 4-8) shot itself in the foot all weekend, making 12 errors and all but falling out of Ivy contention.

"Obviously, at 10-2 we're feeling real good," said Harvard Coach Joe Walsh. "But this is a competitive league and anybody's got a chance to win any game. We're the defending champions and the way we're looking at it, Brown is coming into our house, and they've got to worry about preparing for us, not the other way around."

The Crimson has now won nine of 12 and six straight.

Harvard 8, Yale 4

For the second straight weekend, senior righthander Donny Jamieson started and battled, nailing down the fourth game of the series with a complete-game victory.

Jamieson crossed up a Bulldog order accustomed to the hard-throwing arms of Garett Vail and Ben Crockett by using a mix of offspeed stuff, including a very workable slider, to allow just three earned runs on nine hits. Jamieson struck out nine and walked two.

It was the second win in two starts for Jamieson, who began the season in the bullpen. Jamieson improved to 3-0 and lowered his ERA to 4.57.

"The job of our starters is to eat up innings," Walsh said. "Getting the outings we did today from them was huge."

The Crimson also got a pair of clutch two-run hits from freshman second baseman Faiz Shakir and freshman shortstop Mark Mager.

Shakir, who had only one hit in three at-bats on the season entering yesterday's action, got a surprise start in the nightcap after singling in the eighth inning of the opener and went 2-for-3 with two RBI.

Shakir capped a three-run rally in the fourth inning, scoring Mager and sophomore right fielder Scott Carmack with a clean single up the middle that gave the Crimson a 4-3 lead.

"I think Shakir was able to really pick the team up today," Walsh said. "He got some hits out of the nine-spot, he beat out a bunt and he did a lot of good things."