Captain Colasante Shines Despite Road Series Loss to Columbia

Harvard’s baseball team traveled to New York, N.Y., this past weekend to face the defending Ivy League Champions, the Columbia Lions, in a three-game series. While it took a series loss, the Crimson picked up a pivotal opening win against the same team that knocked it out of the conference tournament last May.

Harvard (2-14, 1-2 Ivy) was swept in last season’s series in Cambridge, with the Lions (4-12, 2-1) also managing to deliver the two losses that knocked the Crimson out of the Ivy League Tournament, including in the final. Harvard’s victory on Saturday broke a six-game losing streak against Columbia.

The Crimson’s captain — two-way utilityman and the Ivy League Player of the Week, Gio Colasante — was on fire in the series, picking up his first win on the mound this season while also adding at least one RBI in all three games of the weekend. After coming off its annual gauntlet of a nonconference schedule with a 1-12 record, Harvard showed promise to open league play in a season where multiple parts of the team — including a pitching staff that lost two starters to the MLB — were left without direction.

Harvard 4, Columbia 1

The Crimson opened the series with a vengeance against the team that ended its season last year, and with Harvard’s captain on the mound, the Lions were in for a tough matchup to begin Saturday’s doubleheader.

After allowing a single in the first inning, G. Colasante retired fourteen consecutive Columbia batters, flaunting his dominance in a performance where he allowed just two hits and one earned run across six innings of beautiful pitching.

On offense, the Crimson started slowly, not reaching base at all in the first two innings before it found steam in the top of the third. Sophomore utilityman Liam Wilson led off the frame with a double, and after a throwing error on junior infielder Jack Rickheim’s two-out single, Wilson crossed home plate to give the visitors a 1-0 lead.

In the top of the fourth with two outs and two men on base, Wilson hit a fly ball to left field that seemed certain to end the half-inning, but due to a fielding error by the Lions’ left fielder, junior infielder Tyler Shulman and senior outfielder Max Lane were able to advance all the way around the bases and score two runs to increase Harvard’s advantage to three.

Columbia managed an RBI single in the bottom of the sixth, but G. Colasante added an insurance run of his own with an RBI single in the next inning to give the Crimson a 4-1 lead that would not be altered as freshman reliever Brett Gable came in and recorded the three-inning save, his first of his career. The win on the mound was G. Colasante’s first of the season after going 2-4 in his junior campaign.

Harvard 3, Columbia 5

The second game of the doubleheader was less kind to Harvard, as sophomore Luca Alagheband gave up a two-run home run in the first inning and a sacrifice fly in the second to pin the Crimson in a 3-0 deficit.

The score held until the fourth inning, when G. Colasante scored on an RBI double from Lane to cut the Lions’ lead to two. In the next inning, G. Colasante continued his heroics from the opener, hitting a two-run home run to tie the game midway through and force Columbia to do something.

Unfortunately for the visitors, the home team quickly answered the call, and in the bottom of the sixth, the Lions paired an RBI triple with an RBI double to give themselves a 5-3 lead that would not be relinquished as they picked up the afternoon victory.

With its win, Columbia was guaranteed to avoid the series sweep, which hasn’t happened to the Lions in Ancient Eight play since the end of the 2023 season.

Harvard 3, Columbia 8

The third and final game of the series began much like the first, as Harvard answered two Columbia runs in the bottom of the third with a two-run home run from senior infielder Jordan Kang in the next inning to tie the score at two runs apiece going into the bottom of the fourth.

Unfortunately for the Crimson, that was where the similarities ended, as the Lions hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the fourth and a trio of RBI singles in the seventh to open up an 8-3 lead that they would carry to the end of the game.

Harvard only collected one more hit after the fourth inning — a solo home run from G. Colasante in the eighth — as it dropped its third straight series to Columbia.

The Crimson will stay on the road to face Cornell in a three-game series this weekend before playing its home opener against Stonehill on Tuesday, March 31, at 3 p.m. EDT.

— Staff writer Connor Castañeda can be reached at [email protected].