Sophomore outfielder Lance Salsgiver and the Crimson opened Ivy play with a 3-1 record, including a two-game sweep of Princeton.

In his last trip to Clarke Field for the 2003 Ivy Championship Series, then-junior Trey Hendricks could only sit and watch. Sidelined with bone chips in his knee when the Harvard baseball team fell two games to one to the host Tigers to end its season, Hendricks was just a spectator.

Yesterday, he was the star of the show.

The senior tossed his second-straight complete game—a day after setting the Harvard record for consecutive games with a hit—to propel the Crimson past the defending Ivy Champions 4-1 and complete a two-game sweep of the Tigers.

But he said it was just like any other game.

“It seemed like any other game to me,” Hendricks said. “I wasn’t putting any more emphasis on it or approaching it any differently than I do any other game.”

The wins—combined with a two-game split at Cornell on Saturday—put Harvard (9-8-1, 3-1 Ivy) atop the Red Rolfe Division standings after the first weekend of conference play.

And somewhat surprisingly, in two of the three wins, it was the team’s starting pitching and not its powerful lineup that led the way.

Senior Mike Morgalis turned in arguably the best game of his two-year Crimson career on Saturday. The right hander hurled a complete game, three-hit shutout against the Big Red to help Harvard rebound from a Game 1 loss to take a 2-0 victory in the second half of the doubleheader.

The Crimson will next travel to Holy Cross on Wednesday before opening its home Ivy schedule against Columbia and Penn this weekend.

HARVARD 4, PRINCETON 1

The Crimson jumped out to an early 1-0 lead on a sacrifice fly by Hendricks in the first and never trailed to sweep a doubleheader from the consensus preseason pick as the league’s top team.

From that point on, the senior right hander took over, allowing only two hits and two walks while striking out eight over nine innings of work against Princeton (12-10, 1-3).

Hendricks (3-1) outdueled Tiger starting pitcher Gavin Fabian, a freshman who has been arguably Princeton’s most effective hurler in a star-studded rotation, to earn the win.

Fabian (2-2) allowed two earned runs on seven hits while striking out a season-high 11 batters in eight innings in his Ivy League debut. But its wasn’t nearly enough.

Senior centerfielder Bryan Hale singled off of Fabian to lead off the game, and advanced to third on an error, before Hendricks drove him home to give the Crimson a 1-0 lead.