Baseball Upsets No. 16 Tulane at Regionals

Deja vu, anyone?

The Harvard baseball team under third-year Coach Joe Walsh is no stranger to upsets, and it added another one to its resume on May 23, stunning No. 16 Tulane (48-16, 22-5 Conference USA) in a 14-11, come-from-behind victory to keep itself alive in the NCAA Regional Tournament.

Harvard (36-12, 16-4 Ivy), which entered the double-elimination Regional as the five seed, had split its previous two games, a 16-1 shellacking at the hands of No. 8 and second-seeded Cal State-Fullerton (47-17, 25-5 Big West) and a 6-5 extra-inning win over sixth-seeded Nicholls State (28-34, 13-11 Southland).

And with the Crimson trailing 11-7 in the seventh inning to the Conference USA-champion Green Wave, it looked like the two-time Ivy League-champion and top team in New England was about to bow out from the Tournament most ungracefully.

But with one down, junior second baseman Peter Woodfork sent a line-drive single the other way, and junior Andrew Huling advanced him to second on a fielder's choice to the right side. Senior Brett Vankoski blasted a pinch-hit, RBI single to center. Sophomore Eric Binkowski, facing a 1-2 count, fisted a grounder into right.

With two on and two out and his team losing by three runs to a national powerhouse, senior center fielder Brian Ralph stepped into the batter's box.

In Harvard's first game of the Regional, against Fullerton, Ralph had been up in a similar situation--then, the bases were jammed and the Crimson was down four in the fifth. His warning-track flyout was Harvard's last gasp of that contest, as Fullerton exploded thereafter.

A little redemption was in order.

Ralph yanked a 2-0 hanger from Tulane reliever Scott Bell over the right-centerfield wall. The pro-Harvard--or rather anti-Tulane--crowd of LSU's Alex Box Stadium exploded as Ralph rounded the basepaths having just hit the biggest round-tripper of his impressive collegiate career.

A pair of eighth-inning RBI singles from Huling and Binkowski and three scoreless relief innings from junior Donny Jamieson sent the Crimson to a 14-11 win, extending its season one more game.

So, in the early evening of Saturday, May 23, the last three teams alive in the South II Regional of the NCAA Tournament were two-time defending national champion LSU, 1995-champion Fullerton and a scrappy bunch from Cambridge's non-scholarship Ivy institution.

"The fact that we were one of three teams left standing with LSU and Fullerton says a lot," Walsh said.

It says that, thanks to Harvard--who last season defeated No. 4-ranked UCLA in the Midwest Regional en route to a third-place finish--Northeast baseball was on the collegiate map.

Fullerton eliminated Harvard from the Regional later that evening, jumping out to a 9-0 lead after three innings to post an 11-7 victory, but the damage to the status quo in collegiate baseball was done.

In addition to its third straight Red Rolfe division title and second straight Ivy crown, the Crimson finished the season ranked No. 24 in the Associated Press poll, having set new school records for wins, home runs, hits and stolen bases.

"We were fighting for national respect, to show that we're not only a great school, but that we've got a great baseball team too," Walsh said.

Notes

Junior third baseman Hal Carey ended the season on a 15-game hitting streak. The Needham, Mass., product went 9-for-14 in the Regional, scored five runs and drove in six.

Captain David Forst finished the season with a school-record 67 hits, breaking the previous mark of 64 set by Andrew Huling and Brian Ralph in 1997. A career .298 hitter with 26 RBI entering the season, Forst finished the year with a team-high .406 batting average and 39 RBI.

Jamieson won both games of the Regional Tournament. In addition to the win over Tulane, he nailed down a relief win with one and two-thirds innings against Nicholls State. Freshman John Birtwell pitched seven and one-third innings of one-run ball to stake the Crimson to a 3-1 lead, but Nicholls State tallied two in the eighth off of sophomore Mike Madden to send the game into the 10th.

Forst, Carey and junior catcher Jason Keck logged three hits apiece in the game. Carey also scored twice and drove in three runs, including the game-winner in the 10th.