HOUSTON—The Harvard baseball team’s season ended where it began—in Houston’s Reckler Park, this time in the NCAA Regional Playoffs. But just as in the three-game series against Rice that opened the season back in March, the Crimson was unable to leave Texas with a win.

Harvard fell to Washington, 4-2, in the loser’s bracket of the NCAA Regionals on Saturday to end its season. A day earlier, the Crimson dropped its opener to national No. 4 seed Rice, 8-3. Harvard’s appearance in the double-elimination playoff had been its first since 1999, when the Crimson (20-26) also fell in two quick games to higher-seeded competition.

“The disappointing thing is that we had a lot of good seniors on this club,” Walsh said. “I really feel for those guys. We were really planning on playing Saturday night.”

Washington 4, Harvard 2

Many in Houston expected captain Ben Crockett to make his final start against the team he almost beat in March when Crockett struck out six in a close 2-1 loss to the Owls. But Harvard Coach Joe Walsh elected to throw sophomore Marc Hordon against Rice, leaving Crockett to dig the Crimson out of the loser’s bracket on Saturday.

If not for one bad inning, Crockett might have pulled it off. The senior turned in a typical gutsy outing—a complete-game, nine-strikeout performance that gave him 117 strikeouts for the season, a new Harvard record.

But in the fourth inning, the Huskies put together a two-out, four-run rally off Crockett for all the offense they would get—or need.

With the Crimson nursing a 1-0 lead, Washington’s Jay Garthwaite doubled to deep left. The next batter, John Otness tore another double to left-center that hit the wall between sophomore outfielders Hordon and Bryan Hale, tying the game.

The hit parade continued for Washington as Aaron Hathaway knocked an RBI single off the right-field wall to give the Huskies the lead.

“I was inconsistent with my curveball,” Crockett said. “My fastball was solid, and I had a pretty good change-up, but I was too inconsistent with my off-speed pitches. I wasn’t able to get ahead and I got rattled a little [in the fourth].”

Then, with the Crimson still an out away from ending the inning, sophomore right fielder Ian Wallace misjudged a hard-hit ball by Washington’s Greg Isaacson. Wallace took a few steps inward, then was forced to scramble back as the ball landed a few steps behind him and began to roll toward the wall. When the dust had settled, Isaacson had a triple and Washington led by two.

Huskies first baseman Taylor Johnson surprised the Crimson with a perfect bunt in the next at-bat. Crockett fielded the slow roller and threw to first, but first base umpire Randy Harvey ruled that Crockett’s toss pulled senior Josh San Salvador off the bag, scoring the fourth and final run.

“I thought we had a chance to win it all the way,” Walsh said. “In the fourth inning, we didn’t do a lot of things right.”

Crockett settled down after that rough inning, and Trey Hendricks’ first-pitch solo shot over the right field wall—his sixth dinger of the year—narrowed the deficit to two runs.

But Harvard was not able to do much else against Huskies junior Sean White (7-2), who scattered seven hits and struck out six in winning his sixth straight game—the first complete game of his career.