Washington, Pa. – Keystone College opened the NCAA Mideast Regional Baseball Tournament with a 5-2 win over 12^th ranked La Roche College on Thursday evening at Washington & Jefferson College's Ross Memorial Park.  The sixth-seeded Giants improve to 32-13 overall with their fifth straight regional tournament victory and will take on the winner of Thursday night's final game between second-seeded Cortland State and DePauw University at 7:45p.m. tomorrow night in a winner's bracket game.
 
Thursday's contest was a rematch of a pair of games played at the NCAA Division III  World Series in Appleton, Wisconsin, both won by Keystone, 6-1 and 5-4 (10 innings), as the Giants advanced to the national championship series.
 
Keystone took a 1-0 lead in the top of the fourth inning of Thursday evening's contest as Tony Hunter II (Savannah, Ga./South Effingham) singled through the right side to bring home Brady Barr (Bowie, Md./Bowie) with the game's first run before extending its advantage to 3-0 with a pair of runs on four hits and one error the following inning.
 
Brendan Long (Naples, Fla./Barron Collier) came around to score the Giants' second run of the contest on a La Roche error following a base hit from Chris Panzarella (Hazle Township, Pa./Hazleton Area), who made it a 3-0 game by scoring on a wild pitch later in the inning.
 
The Redhawks got on the board in the bottom of the fifth inning on an RBI double from Shane Roebuck, but Keystone got the run back in the visitor's seventh when Bray Curreri (Eldred, N.Y./Eldred Central) singled up the middle to plate Adam Kelly (Beach Lake, Pa./Honesdale) to give the Giants a 4-1 cushion.
 
La Roche cut its deficit to 4-2 with on an RBI single from Ian Velez with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning, but Keystone got that run back in their next trip to the plate as Panzarella scored as Curreri reached on the Redhawks' fifth error of the game to take a 5-2 advantage into the bottom of the ninth inning.
 
That was more than enough for Keystone's Miguel Reyes (Bronx, N.Y./Monroe), who improved to 9-1 on the season with his second complete game performance on the mound this postseason.  The senior right-hander, who tossed a three-hit shutout against Neumann University in the CSAC semifinals, yielded just one earned run on eight hits while striking out a pair of batters. 
 
Panzarella and Kelly had three hits apiece with Panzarella scoring twice for the Giants and Kelly finishing a home run shy of the cycle.  Hunter added a pair of hits as well as Keystone held a 12-8 advantage in hits for the game while earning the all-important opening round victory.
 
The Giants dealt La Roche starter Regis Sauer (9-1) his first loss of the season by touching him up for four runs on 11 hits while Sauer picked up six strikeouts in seven innings on the hill.  Tre Thomas gave up one run on one hit while collecting three K's over the final two innings.
 
Velez paced the Redhawks with three hits in the loss.
 
La Roche (34-9) will face the loser of Thursday night's game between Cortland State and DePauw in an elimination game starting at 1:15 p.m.