In his best league start since his freshman season, Ronz came out firing, holding Princeton hitless through the first three innings. Ronz used a lethally efficient curveball that had several Tigers swinging in the dust. He also knocked down the one ball Princeton hit hard early on—a liner off the bat of second baseman Steve Young—and threw to first to complete the play.
“All of my pitches were working today, which hadn’t happened in a while,” said Ronz, who has bounced back from an occasionally spotty junior season. “The changeup was good, but I had the changeup last year. The curveball was what really helped me.”
Ronz was ultimately charged with two runs, the second unearned. Walsh pulled Ronz in favor of closer Barry Wahlberg to get the final out of the ninth with a man on third, and Wahlberg appeared to have gotten the job done when Chernoff popped his pitch to shallow right. But Farkes, racing backwards while pursuing the tough play, fell backward and lost the ball, allowing Adam Balkan to score. With the Crimson already struggling and Pauly still on the mound, there would be no second rally.
Princeton 5, Harvard 1
Princeton had already thrown ace Ross Ohlendorf this weekend in an extra-innings win over Dartmouth, perhaps presenting a chance for a slumping Harvard lineup to roar back to life. Senior Ryan Quillian, one-time Ivy Pitcher of the Year, would have none of it.
Quillian handcuffed the Crimson for six strong innings as the Tigers took the opener. After giving up a leadoff single to Salsgiver to start the game, Quillian (3-3) gave up only three more hits before giving way to Pauly.
The Crimson, meanwhile, struggled in the field. With Princeton’s Jonathan Miller at the plate and two outs in the third, Mike Morgalis (1-2) threw past Hendricks on an attempted pickoff throw to first, allowing the lightning quick Szymanski to get all the way to third. With two strikes in the same at-bat, Morgalis threw what appeared to be an inning-ending fastball, but the home plate umpire called it a ball. Miller hammered the next pitch into left for a run-scoring double.
Overall, Morgalis pitched adequately—allowing four runs, but only one earned in 6.2 innings—but fielding problems and a lack of run support proved the team’s demise.
“We got great pitching from Morgalis and not great fielding behind him, and an ump out there who missed a few calls,” Walsh said. “And in games like that, you need athletes who can put the ball in play. If you’re swinging and missing playing station to station baseball, it’s going to be hard to get runs.”
Morgalis went 6.2 innings and gave up seven hits, but wound up tagged for four runs, three of which were unearned. When Morgalis wasn’t trying to get a bead on what seemed to be a very narrow strike zone, the players behind him were having their own difficulties. Farkes misplayed a liner off the bat of DH Will Venable that gave Princeton second and third with one out in the fourth.
Morgalis went on to give up two runs in that inning, the second on a five-pitch, bases-loaded walk to B.J. Szymanski.
Later in the game, the Crimson gave up two runs on a deep Andrew Salini ball to left off freshman Mike Dukovich that Lentz, playing one of his first games in the outfield for the Crimson, misjudged.
Farkes got the Crimson’s lone run at the bottom of the fourth inning, hammering a 2-1 pitch 350 feet past the trees right field for a solo homer.
Pauly gave up a double to sophomore Rob Wheeler in the ninth to give Harvard second and third with two out, but junior Bryan Hale struck out to end it. Wheeler and Hale, along with freshman Frank Hermann and sophomore A.J. Solomine, each started a game as Walsh continued to search the roster for answers on a day when Princeton pitching had them all.
—Staff Writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu