Advertisement

Harvard Starts Strong But Falters At Metrodome

Richard F. Taylor

The Harvard baseball team, shown here in earlier action, had a busy weekend at the Metrodome Tournament in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Crimson dropped two of three.

Coming off of its best start in three seasons, the Harvard baseball team has so far fulfilled predictions for strong performances on the mound. Unfortunately, this past weekend saw the squad drop two out of three games at the Metrodome Tournament in Minneapolis, Minn.

“Pitching, that’s been the highlight of our trip,” Harvard coach Joe Walsh said, “Our three starting pitchers have all given us very good outings.”

With the help of its junior and sophomore starting hurlers, the Crimson (3-3) beat Creighton (8-4) on the last day of tournament play, after falling to Minnesota (5-9) and South Dakota State (8-4) on Friday and Saturday.

“It was a good experience for us to play in the dome on a major league field for the weekend,” junior captain Tyler Albright said. “And it was good for us to get out of there with a win and get some momentum going into the week.”

HARVARD 5, CREIGHTON 2

Advertisement

In its last game of the weekend, Harvard was able to take down the Bluejays thanks to the Crimson’s deciding runs late in the game.

“It was a real team effort on Sunday,” Albright said. “And we saw some really great offensive production from our lineup.”

Sophomore Jeff Reynolds hit a single to center field, and senior Dan Zailskas hit a double to left, each for an RBI to put Harvard ahead in the sixth inning. Reynolds and fellow sophomore Marcus Way both contributed two more RBI off doubles in the eighth to build up the Crimson’s lead.

Reynolds also contributed to team defense at second base, along with junior Sean O’Hara at shortstop.

“We had O’Hara and Reynolds in the middle making terrific plays and saving some runs with diving catches [that] really helped us a lot,” Walsh said.

Against Harvard’s starting pitcher, junior Eric Eadington, Creighton was only able to get two runs and five hits in the first seven innings of play. The Crimson lefty also avoided walking any Bluejay batters during his time on the mound.

Zailskas came in as relief and allowed the opponent only one hit in two innings to secure Harvard’s three-run victory.

“We had some great pitching,” Walsh said. “And I think we played our best baseball game of the year against Creighton.”

SOUTH DAKOTA STATE 7, HARVARD 4

With seven innings already in the books in Saturday’s game, it looked like the Crimson was headed towards its third win of the season, but the Jackrabbits had something else in mind.

Tags

Advertisement