For the second straight weekend, the Harvard baseball team traveled to play four games in a warmer climate. Unlike last time out, the Crimson came back to Cambridge with a win under its belt.

Harvard (1-7) earned its first W of the season over Lamar (11-6) in Beaumont, Texas, with a clean 4-0 victory Friday night. But the team’s struggles in close games continued, as the Crimson dropped a pair of one-run contests on Saturday and fell, 10-3, in the final game of the series on Sunday.

LAMAR 10, HARVARD 3

Despite jumping out to an early lead, the Crimson could not hang on in the late innings and settled for a loss to end the four-game set.

Things fell apart for Harvard in the seventh inning, when the Big Red strung together six singles and posted five runs to seize the lead. Lamar put the game firmly out of reach with a three-run homer from Jacoby Middleton in the eighth.

In his second pitching appearance of the weekend, junior Tanner Anderson took the loss for the Crimson. The Harvard pitching staff struggled against the middle of the Lamar lineup, as the third through sixth hitters went a combined 10-for-14.

For the Crimson, the highlight of the day came in the first inning when junior Mike Martin led off the game with a solo shot to left field. Harvard managed ten hits of its own—three players, Martin included, finished with two knocks—but the Lamar staff ensured that the hits were scattered.

LAMAR 3, HARVARD 2

Down one run in the top of the ninth, the Crimson found itself in a familiar spot. This time, Harvard successfully broke through to tie the game, as sophomore Mike Klug reached on a leadoff walk and scored on an RBI groundout from senior Carlton Bailey to send the game into extras.

But the first two Big Red hitters reached base in the bottom of the tenth, and a single two batters later allowed Lamar to walk off with another win in the rubber match of Saturday’s doubleheader.

The game was marked by effective pitching on both sides. Senior Sam Dodge made it into the seventh inning, giving up zero earned runs and just four hits. Dodge escaped a bases-loaded jam in the second and retired seven straight in one stretch.

“We really threw in the zone and weren’t walking too many guys,” Anderson said. “We were making them hit. We were really just trying to throw strikes and letting our defense do the work behind us.”

Harvard could never get things going at the plate, as a trio of Big Red pitchers held the team to just four hits in ten innings. Junior Brandon Kregel registered the Crimson’s only extra-base hit, a double that plated the first run of the game in the sixth.

LAMAR 4, HARVARD 3

After falling behind by four runs, the Crimson nearly clawed all the way back in the first game of the doubleheader. A four-hit sixth inning plated two runs, and Kregel tacked on an RBI groundout to bring Harvard within one.