French Leads Brown Baseball to Sunday Split at Harvard

Recap, photo courtesy of Brown University

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Senior Austin French tossed seven scoreless innings to pace the Brown baseball team past Harvard in the opener, 6-0, before the Bears fell in the second game by the same score to complete the four-game series at O'Donnell Field.

Brown moves to 12-22 overall and 6-10 in the Ivy League, while the Crimson move to 15-21, 8-8.

Game 1 (Brown 6, Harvard 0)
French matched a career high with 11 strikeouts as he went the full seven innings and limited the Crimson to five hits with one walk. 

Josh Huntley (Aurora, Colo.) led the offense's nine-hit effort with a pair of doubles and three RBIs

with one walk, while Kevin Guthrie (Sarasota, Fla.) also drove in two runs.

Brown opened up the scoring in the third, when Jake Levine (Newton, Mass.) drove in the first run of the game on a single to left before Guthrie hit a two-run single to center field.

Huntley gave the Bears a six-run advantage in the sixth inning with a three-run, bases-clearing double to left center. Meanwhile, French struck out the side in both the second and third innings, and had ten strikeouts after five frames to pave the way for the shutout.

Game 2 (Harvard 6, Brown 0)
Kevin Stone gave the Crimson eight innings of shutout ball as the starter in the second game, allowing four hits with eight strikeouts for the win. Max Ritchie (Woodbridge, Conn.) gave up six runs in 3.2 innings in the loss. Bobby Leyman (North Hampton, N.H.), JJ Sliepka (Houston, Texas) and Dante Bosnic (Lutz, Fla.) combined for 4.1 innings of hitless work out of the bullpen. 

Guthrie went 2-for-3 at the plate to lead Brown, while Levine and Tim McKeithan (Arden, N.C.) had one double apiece.

Harvard scored one run in the second and then five runs over the next two innings to establish an early six-run lead. Brown recorded two of its five hits in the final two innings, and had runners in scoring position in both frames, but Stone and reliever Shaun Rubin escaped to seal the split.

Brown will host Bryant in midweek action on Tuesday at 3:45 PM.