“We came in here actually knowing that they were kind of shaky,” said Salsgiver, who finished an impressive three-for-four in Game 2. “It worked out.”
And so, when consecutive bunts in the seventh—this time by backup catcher Andrew Casey and Vance, again—resulted in errors, the Crimson put on the pressure. Brown reached on a shortstop miss-throw and second baseman Taylor Meehan reached on Prince’s second error.
By the time the carnage had ceased, four more runs padded a 13-6 Harvard lead.
Princeton hit three solo home runs during Game 2—including one by Will Venable, whose second of the day towered over the right-field shrubbery.
Harvard freshman Shawn Haviland (4-1) allowed five runs, only three earned independently of the Crimson’s four errors, to earn his team-leading fourth victory of the season.
PRINCETON 7, HARVARD 2
Entering the day undefeated in Ivy play, Harvard finally succumbed to pitcher Erik Stiller and Princeton with a 7-2 loss.
Venable went two-for-three and scored three runs for Princeton. He also ripped a high line-drive home run off Crimson starter Matt Brunnig (1-1), his sixth of the season.
“Venable’s a tremendous player, prospect, and athlete,” Walsh said of last year’s 15th-round draft choice of the Baltimore Orioles. “When you go up there and get behind on a player 2-0 like that, [and] throw the ball down the middle there, he knows what to do with it.”
Only Klimkiewicz, with two solid doubles, hit the ball with relative authority for Harvard during the game. Captain Schuyler Mann had the team’s only RBI, with a single in the fourth.
Facing a 5-2 deficit in the bottom of the fifth, however, sophomore Rob Nelson pinch-hit with a runner on first and one out. Nelson smoked a line drive that was snagged by Tiger shortstop Lucian.
“If that had gone a little bit of left-center, who knows?” Walsh said. We might have got a lid off [of the scoring].”
Senior Curtis Miller and sophomores Jake Bruton and Jason Brown finished the game in relief for the Crimson, which dropped to 6-1.
—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.