SCRANTON, Pa. – The No. 3 seed University of Scranton baseball team (25-14) plated three runs in the first and never looked back en route to a 16-3 victory over the No. 2 seed Catholic University Cardinals (26-10) in an opening round game at the Landmark Conference Tournament on Friday night at Volpe Field in Scranton.
Senior right-hander Daniel Johnson (Whitehouse Station, N.J./Immaculata) tossed a career-high 7 1/3 IP in the victory for the Royals, allowing three runs on five hits to go along with four walks and five strikeouts. Johnson fired seven scoreless to begin his night and notched the 16th win of his career, which is tied for the second-most in program history alongside Bobby Della Polla (2010-13).
With the victory, Scranton advances to battle No. 4 seed Susquehanna in the winner's bracket game on Saturday afternoon at 2:30 p.m.
Catholic will take on top-seeded Elizabethtown in an elimination game at 11 a.m.
In the Royals' three-run first, senior Nick Reposa (Factoryville, Pa./Tunkhannock) was hit by a pitch to start the inning, advanced to second on a wild pitch and scored on junior Corey Zientek's (Sugarloaf, Pa./Hazleton Area) RBI double. Graduate student Jake Lisicky (Whitehall, Pa./Whitehall) followed with an RBI single to plate Zientek and later scored on an RBI groundout from senior Braden Breithaupt (Canadensis, Pa./Stroudsburg).
The 3-0 score held until the fourth inning when Scranton took advantage of three Catholic errors that led to two runs and a 5-0 advantage for the time being. In the home half of the frame, the Cardinals had runners at second and third with one away, but Johnson got back-to-back strikeouts to end the threat.
In the top of the seventh, junior Matthew Querey (Wilmington, Del./Salesianum) beat out an infield single to plate Breithaupt and a throwing error on the play charged to Catholic SS Dante Pozzi allowed a second run to score.
Catholic righty Tucker Alch, who entered the contest as the conference leader in ERA, was dealt the loss after allowing seven runs (four earned) on seven hits to go along with five walks and six strikeouts in 6 2/3 IP.
Head coach Mike Bartoletti's team got to the Cardinals' bullpen for three more runs in the eighth as junior John Zarnowski (East Brunswick, N.J./St. Joseph's) knocked in a pair with a two-run single and a wild pitch brought home the 10th run of the night.
Scranton tacked on six additional runs in the ninth inning behind Breithaupt's two-run double, three bases-loaded walks and a bases-loaded hit by pitch.
Lisicky (2-5, RBI, 2 R), Zarnowski (2-5, 2 RBI) and junior Jack Heineman (Abington, Pa./LaSalle College) who added two hits and two runs scored all registered multi-hit games for the Royals. Breithaupt and Zientek both drove in a pair of runs and scored three runs on the night.
Junior lefty Mike Fox (Westfield, N.J./Union Catholic) and freshman righty Ryan Boyd (Millwood, N.Y./Kennedy Catholic) combined to preserve the victory in relief of Johnson.
--ROYALS--