Baseball Squads Split Series in ICS Rematch

A lot has changed since Harvard and Princeton last faced each other in the 2006 Ivy Championship Series. Both teams graduated key contributors since last May’s playoffs, and freshmen are playing important roles in 2007.

The weather is also a little different: the temperature at O’Donnell Field on Saturday never broke 40 degrees.

In a rematch of the two Ancient Eight division champs from a year ago, Harvard and Princeton split a doubleheader, the third consecutive twinbill split for the Crimson. The Tigers took game one, 6-4, in extra innings behind a complete-game effort from Steven Miller, while Shawn Haviland led Harvard to a 6-3 victory in the second matchup.

But neither team seemed close to last spring’s championship form, and, in the frigid temperatures, neither team seemed able to really heat up.

The weather made for a tough day in the field for both teams, as the doubleheader featured a combined 10 errors. The Crimson also came out cold at the plate, perhaps due to its week away from live pitching—its midweek game against Holy Cross was postponed twice due to snow.

“The cold has an effect, but it’s on both teams—that’s not why we split today,” coach Joe Walsh said. “It really took us a while to get going. You’ve got to eliminate the mistakes.”

HARVARD 6, PRINCETON 3

It was a showdown of Ivy aces in the nightcap, with Haviland, the league’s 2006 Pitcher of the Year, taking the ball for Harvard and Christian Staehely, who earned the preseason nod for the same honor this season, on the mound for the Tigers.

After a few mediocre non-conference outings, Haviland proved that he is still the cream of the Ancient Eight pitching crop, turning in eight-plus innings and allowing three earned runs on eight hits.

“It’s one you circle on your calendar anyway,” Haviland said, “because it’s been us or them for the Ivy League for the past few years, but there was a little extra something there.”

Meanwhile, the Crimson reached Staehely for six runs on seven hits in six innings.

“I think Shawn learned a lot from the hitters in the first game,” Walsh said. “I’m really pleased that we knocked Staehely out. He’s the kid that ended our season last year.”

But it was six Princeton errors that sealed the win for Harvard. Freshman Greg Van Horn had the roughest day in the field for the Tigers, committing four errors at shortstop.

With a 6-1 lead, Walsh left Haviland in the game entering the ninth inning, hoping to rest his bullpen for the next day’s doubleheader against Cornell. But when Princeton loaded the bases on two singles sandwiched around a walk, Walsh had to turn to sophomore Ryan Watson. Watson recorded two outs while walking in a run before giving way to Adam Cole. After issuing a walk of his own, Cole struck out Jack Murphy to end a long afternoon.

“He’s a guy who can hit the ball out of the ballpark, so I just wanted to go strength against strength there,” Walsh said. “I just didn’t want the longball to beat us there.”

After a sluggish start in the first game, Harvard jumped on Staehley early. Back-to-back RBI doubles from senior Andrew Casey and freshman Dan Zailskas in the second gave the Crimson a quick lead, and unearned runs in the fourth and six frames made it comfortable for Haviland.

Haviland allowed a double to Van Horn to lead off the game, but then found his groove and retired 11 Tigers in a row. He did not allow a run until the fifth inning, when Dan DeGeorge plated Adrian Turnham with a double to left-center.

PRINCETON 6, HARVARD 4

The Crimson scored two unearned runs in the bottom of the seventh to send the first game into extra innings, but senior Jake Bruton gave back the two runs with a throwing error in the top of the eighth and took the hard-luck loss for Harvard.

The home team got a bit of luck in the bottom half of the seventh when Van Horn dropped Casey’s potential game-ending pop fly in left, allowing junior Tom Stack-Babich and senior Brendan Byrne, who had each singled, to score with the tying runs.

Princeton starter Steven Miller went the distance, fooling Crimson hitters early and often en route to his first win of the season. Miller set the tone from the get-go, striking out the side on nine pitches in the bottom of the first.

“He just threw a lot of strikes,” said junior Matt Vance, who managed a 2-for-4 effort at the plate but was one of Miller’s first three strikeout victims. “I don’t want to use the cold as an excuse, but we just came out slow.”

Meanwhile, the Tigers struck quickly against Harvard starter Max Perlman, getting a run in the top of the first on a leadoff double from Van Horn and an RBI single from Spencer Lucian.

“I’ll give their kid credit—he was tough,” Walsh said of Miller. “I thought Max was pretty good too. But they were getting leadoff guys on every inning, and that’s why they were able to get that lead, because we weren’t.”

Down 3-0, the Crimson found some life in the fifth, loading the bases with a walk and two singles. Then Casey fouled off 10 pitches in a 14-pitch at-bat, but went down on a called third strike that the Harvard faithful felt missed outside. Casey’s battle reenergized his teammates, as Vance promptly followed with a double, plating two runners and pulling his team within one.

—Staff writer Emily W. Cunningham can be reached at ecunning@fas.harvard.edu.