Baseball Swept by Penn in Final Home Series

After falling in the Ivy League Tournament final in 2025, the Harvard baseball team failed to make the playoffs in its current campaign, dropping out of postseason contention after being swept by the University of Pennsylvania this past weekend at home.

The Crimson (8-25, 6-12 Ivy) fell by scores of 13-7, 10-2, and 7-6 in its penultimate series of the season, never holding a lead in the series and allowing more runs to the Quakers (18-19, 12-6) than it has to any other opponent in a three-game series this season.

On a high note for Harvard, sophomore pitcher Luca Alagheband was named Ivy League Pitcher of the Week on Monday, receiving the honor for the first time in his career after allowing a single run in 10.2 innings pitched across the week. The Canadian lefty had four innings of relief in Sunday’s closeout game against Penn after making the start in a 6-3 loss against Brown on Tuesday.

Harvard 7, Penn 13

To open the series, captain Gio Colasante started on the mound for Harvard. Though for one of the front-runners for Ivy League Player of the Year, it was a rough appearance from the beginning.

Two RBI singles early opened the scoring for the Quakers, and before G. Colasante could get out of a bases-loaded jam with two outs, an infield error by the Crimson allowed two more runs to score unearned.

Sophomore catcher Liam Wilson added a solo homer in the bottom of the second to cut Penn’s lead to three, but the Quakers answered with runs in the top of the third and fourth innings to maintain a comfortable lead. In the fifth, two more runs for Penn continued to open up its lead, which sat at 8-1 after five innings before G. Colasante was relieved from his start.

Harvard homered twice — including a two-run shot from junior shortstop Jack Rickheim — to tack on three runs in the bottom of the sixth before adding another three runs in the eighth on a fielder’s choice and another two-run bomb from Rickheim. After eight innings, the game was more competitive, sitting at a score of 10-7, but a Quaker home run paired with an RBI single in the ninth gave Penn a decisive 13-7 advantage that remained unchanged as the game came to a close.

Harvard 2, Penn 10

The Crimson faced a one-two punch of Quaker pitchers in the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader, with freshman Nick Newburn collecting two scoreless innings off the start before senior Thomas Shurtleff — one of the best pitchers in the conference who entered the match with a 4-0 record — added seven strong innings of relief to collect the win.

Harvard managed just four hits in the match, scoring only two runs in an ice-cold offensive performance. The Crimson collected its only runs of the game off an RBI double from senior infielder Jordan Kang in the third and an RBI triple from Rickheim in the fifth, and it was never truly a close match.

Penn scored once in the top of the first, but its seven combined runs between the third, fourth, and fifth innings put Harvard away for good and clinched the series win for the Quakers.

Harvard 6, Penn 7

Penn showed up early in the closeout game, putting up seven runs across the first four innings to open a commanding 7-0 lead. The Quakers’ offensive surge, paired with five innings of scoreless pitching from freshman starter Ben Moulin, put Penn in the driver’s seat for a series sweep.

The Crimson, on the other hand, wanted to make things more interesting in its final home game of the season. With Alagheband and freshman Brett Gable going on to combine for 5.1 scoreless innings down the stretch, an opportunity seemingly presented itself.

In the bottom of the eighth, a wild pitch allowed G. Colasante to steal home for a run, which cut the lead to 7-1, and in the bottom of the ninth, the Harvard lineup played its best stretch of the weekend.

Across the frame, the Crimson put up five hits and a walk, gutting Penn senior reliever John Cerwinski and getting within one run of tying the game. With two outs and a runner in scoring position, it was last week’s hero Cullen Stone — who hit a three-RBI double en route to a win over Dartmouth — at the plate for Harvard.

Unfortunately for the sophomore utilityman, he was unable to tack on another hit against a new Quaker pitcher, and after scoring five runs in the inning — the team’s most in any Ivy inning this season — the series came to a sweeping conclusion.

With the Crimson officially eliminated from the postseason, the team now turns to its last four games of the season: a rescheduled road matchup against Holy Cross on Tuesday before its final series of the season on the road at Princeton this weekend.

For Harvard’s head coach, Bill Decker, who has been with the program for over a decade, this closing stretch in the season is about appreciation as much as it is performance.

“Quite frankly, the players have put in a lot of time and effort — as our coaching staff has and everybody else has,” Decker said in a postgame interview.

“It’s time to say thank you, but we need to close it the right way,” he added.

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