HARWICH, MA- The third-seeded Wheaton College baseball team lost to sixth seed Saint Joseph's College of Maine for the second time in as many NCAA Tournaments, as the Lyons suffered a 4-2 setback in Wednesday's double-elimination regional tourney opening round at Whitehouse Field.
Ranked 19th nationally by D3baseball.com and first in the New England Intercollegiate Baseball Association (NEIBA) poll, Wheaton, which went just 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, dropped its third straight game to fall to 29-11. The Lyons will face the loser of tonight's game between second seed Western New England and seventh-seeded Husson University tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. Ranked eighth in the region, the Monks, who eliminated the Lyons from the NCAAs last year, improve to 31-13.
Junior Dan Haugh (Andover, MA/Saint John's Prep) and sophomore Eric Jensen (Gorham, NH/Gorham) each went 2-for-5 to lead Wheaton, with Haugh driving in his 57th RBI and Jensen scoring a run. Senior Sean Munley (Ewing, NJ/The Hun School of Princeton) added an RBI. Sophomore Frank Holbrook (Middletown, RI/Portsmouth Abbey School) suffered his first loss, allowing three runs, including two earned, with two strikeouts and a pair of walks through six innings.
For the Monks, sophomore Mike Pratt (Dartmouth, MA/Bishop Stang) was 2-for-4 with two RBI. Senior Ian Lee (Hampden, ME/Hampden Academy) and junior Dan Achorn (Bow, NH/Bow) had two hits and one RBI apiece, while sophomore Chad Rafferty (Keene, NH/Keene) worked 8.1 frames for the win, fanning 11 while walking four and scattering eight hits. Freshman Joe Gruntkosky (Peabody, MA/Peabody) picked up the save.
The Monks placed the first run on the board in the top of the first, using a pair of singles and a sacrifice bunt to lead 1-0. Wheaton answered with two runs in the home half, with Haugh dropping his program-high-tying 21st double down the right field line to knot the score. Munley followed with a sacrifice fly to give his team a 2-1 edge, scoring Jensen, who reached on an infield single to third.
Saint Joseph's tied the game with an unearned run in the third, taking advantage of a defensive miscue to make the score 2-2. The Blue and White squandered a pair of golden scoring opportunities in the fourth and fifth frames, leaving the bases loaded in each inning, including jamming the bags with one down in the fifth. Rafferty induced a fly ball to right to end the fourth before forcing a pair of outfield flies to thwart the threat the following frame.
Meanwhile, Holbrook retired nine of 10 batters before inducing a two-out walk in the sixth. That base on balls proved costly, as Achorn delivered an RBI double into left center field. On the other side, Rafferty set down eight batters in a row from the fifth through seventh frames. In the eighth, the Lyons were in prime position to push at least one run across, as Munley reached safely on a miscue before advancing to third on a sacrifice and a Monk throwing error.
Rafferty got his next batter to fly out and Saint Joseph's sniffed out Wheaton's suicide squeeze for the eighth inning's second out, as Lee tagged Munley coming home in plenty of time. Rafferty then forced a groundout to second to end the frame. The Lyons drew back-to-back walks with one down in the ninth, chasing Rafferty following his 146th pitch, but a fly out and strikeout ended the game.