WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. (May 24, 2024) – The Sacred Heart University baseball team will play for the trophy. Left-hander Owen MacDonnell (Londonderry, N.H.) stranded the tying run at second base in the ninth inning, as the top-seeded Pioneers held on for an 8-6 victory over second-seeded LIU on the third day of the NEC Championship at Heritage Financial Park. SHU got only 3.2 innings from its starter, but then got a bigtime, 4.2-inning, postseason relief appearance from veteran right-hander Jake McDowell (Brookfield, Conn.) in what was an NEC semifinal in the winners' bracket.
 
It was high tension throughout, as SHU trailed 1-0 early, built a 4-1 lead, and saw LIU rally for a 4-4 tie, all before the fourth inning was through. The Pios would never trail the rest of the way though, and back-to-back two-out RBI hits from Alex Ungar (Ronkonkoma, N.Y.) and Tyler Galletti (Plainview, N.Y.) in the fifth put the team ahead to stay.
 
When asked after the hard-fought win if he was having fun out there, head coach Pat Egan responded with an unequivocal "No. No fun at all," thanks to all the drama. Though he would go on to add that he might think it was pretty cool after he got back to the hotel and had time to process.
 
Fun or not, the effort was enough to earn SHU (35-21) its program-record 35^th win and send the team through to the title round of the NEC Championship for the first time since 2017. Sacred Heart will close out its 25-year tenure in the NEC with its 10^th appearance in the championship round, and will be in the driver's seat. Its opponent would have to win at 4 p.m. on Saturday and again at noon on Sunday to prevent the Pios from claiming the trophy.
 
Elsewhere at the NEC Championship, third-seeded Merrimack and fourth-seeded Wagner met in a 4 p.m. elimination game on Friday, which Merrimack led 4-2 in the sixth inning at press time. The winner of that contest will take on LIU in an elimination game and semifinal on Saturday at noon. As mentioned above, the winner of Saturday's noon game will get SHU, but will have to win twice to secure the title.
 
Turning attention back to Friday afternoon, it was LIU (30-23) which struck first, and did so quickly. A leadoff single to center by Seth Surrett and a five-pitch walk to Benjamin Fierenzi made it two on and nobody out, just seven pitches into the proceedings. Jake Mastillo was next and poked an RBI single through the right side to open the scoring. Ungar nearly threw out Surrett at the plate from right field, but the safe call on a bang-bang play was upheld after video review.
 
SHU would get the run back and then some, with a four-spot in the bottom of the second. The Pios did all their damage after two outs and nobody on, as Galletti got things started with a single to right. Joey Skarad (Stamford, Conn.) followed and roped a double into the corner in left, before right-hander Dominic Pieto uncorked a wild pitch to even the score. John Greene (Naugatuck, Conn.) was next, worked a 2-2 count and then provided the inning's keynote address by driving a run-scoring triple the other way into the gap in right-center. Michael Simonelli (Milford, Conn.) followed with a beautiful safety squeeze bunt for an RBI single, advanced to second on a walk, and then Zack Kovalchik (Archbald, Pa.) capped the inning with a run-scoring single to left-center.
 
SHU only had an inning to enjoy the three-run lead, as the Sharks got to right-handed starter Elijah Foster (Plainfield, N.J.) for three in the fourth. A walk and a hit batsman spelled trouble, though Foster still had runners at the corners with two outs and a chance to get out of it. Surrett poked an RBI single through the left side and then Fierenzi got lucky with his placement and chopped an RBI infield single behind the bag at second. That was the end of the day for Foster, who gave way to McDowell. LIU then executed a first-and-third rundown play to plate the tying run while surrendering the final out of the frame.
 
McDowell worked around a one-out error and walk in the top of the fifth and then Sacred Heart jumped out front to stay with two in the home half. Dante D'Amore (Southington, Conn.) reached with a one-out single, and then Ungar provided the second two-out, RBI triple of the afternoon for the Pios, as he drove a three-bagger of his own into the right-center field gap. Galletti followed up and chased home Ungar with a first-pitch single back through the middle to give SHU a 6-4 lead.
 
From there, McDowell (3-2) managed the lead. He worked around a one-out single in the sixth. He surrendered a solo homer to Carlton Harper – Harper's fourth of the year – with one out in the seventh, and JC Navarro followed with a loud double to right-center, but an infield popup and a flyball to center got McDowell back to the dugout with the lead still intact. In all, he threw 4.2 innings of two-run (one earned) relief, allowed three hits, walked one and struck out one on 79 pitches (49 strikes).
 
The Pios tacked on important insurance runs in the seventh and eighth innings. In the seventh, Tim McGuire (Portsmouth, R.I.) singled up the middle, advanced on a walk and a sacrifice bunt and then scored on a sacrifice fly to left by Skarad. In the eighth, after the LIU infield botched a tailor-made and potential inning-ending double play, D'Amore made the error sting with an RBI single through the left side of the infield.
 
LIU would not go quietly in the ninth. McDowell got the first out and nearly got the second, but Mastillo reached via error. At that point, Egan went to MacDonnell to close things out for the second straight day, after the junior southpaw notched a three-inning save on Thursday. MacDonnell issued an eight-pitch walk to Harper and then Navarro drilled a double into the gap in left-center to cut the lead to 8-6 and put the tying run in scoring position with one out.
 
That's where it would stay though, as MacDonnell (S, 9) struck out Jack Power on three pitches and then got Noah Sorensen to bounce out to D'Amore at first to end the ballgame and send the Pios through to the championship round.