Lord! Men's Squash Wins, 9-0

A match between two undefeated teams at the end of the regular season is usually dubbed the "Game of the Century."

The Harvard men's squash contest with Amherst last night certainly was not that. Instead of giving the Hemenway Gymnasium fans an extraordinarily exciting match, the Crimson (12-0, 6-0 Ivy) treated the Lord Jeffs (16-1) like the other 11 teams it has turned to roadkill this year.

But if the 9-0 outcome was normal, the road to it was not. Harvard juggled its lineup and had a few close games en route to the blowout.

After some intrasquad challenge matches at the end of last week, the Harvard seedings had a new flavor to them. Sophomore Joel Kirsch overtook the No. 1 spot for only the second time this year, bumping co-captain Tal Ben-Shachar to the second seed.

Other interesting positions included senior Mike Oh playing the fourth seed for the first time all year and sophomore Andy Walter down one spot from his usual number-four position.

What this meant was that Kirsch and Oh saw a level of competition that they usually don't face, and that translated into a pair of five-set games--uncharacteristically close for a squad that has won the last five NISRA team championships.

Kirsch won the first two sets against his Lord Jeff opponent, Hayden Felice. Felice captured sets three and four but then staked Kirsch out to a 10-point lead in the fifth and deciding game before falling. It was the first time all season that Harvard's first seed did not win by a 3-0 score.

Oh, meanwhile, took a little while to get going but was able to persevere. He and Amherst's Evan Khan split the first four sets, with Oh winning the second and the third. In the final set, the senior defeated Khan, 15-9.

"I just played a lot more patiently [late in the match]," Oh said. "He liked to speed up the pace."

Those matches were as close as the Lord Jeffs came to preventing the contest from being a shutout. Co-captain Joe Kaplan and junior Jake Hollinger both won by 3-1 counts, but in both cases the Amherst player won a game when his counterpart already had a commanding 2-0 lead.

The other five contests all resulted in 3-0 scores. Ben-Shachar, who is a Crimson editor, absolutely killed Amherst's Collin Bell by a 15-6, 15-0, 15-7 count. By the end of the match, Bell began to lose points after only two or three hits.

Other shutout victors included Walter, sophomore Jeff Blumberg, senior Ted Bruenner and sophomore Rishaad Bilimoria, who overcame a tight 17-15 first game to win in three.

Now that the Crimson has finished its season undefeated, the NISRA Team Tournament (Potter Trophy) awaits. Taking place this Saturday and Sunday at Yale, the NISRA is the final team tournament of the season.

As usual, Harvard's toughest competition should come from Princeton, whom Harvard defeated earlier this year at Hemenway. Amherst  0 Harvard  9