MANSFIELD, Conn. – Junior righty Billy Oldham (Brookfield) tossed a six-hitter with 12 strikeouts for his second complete-game shutout of the season as top-seeded Eastern Connecticut State University moved into the winners' bracket final of the 2022 Little East Conference Baseball Tournament with a 5-0 win over fourth-seeded University of Southern Maine Thursday afternoon at the Eastern Baseball Stadium.
Oldham (8-2), who pitched a two-hitter into the seventh inning without a decision in Eastern's (37-3) 7-6 loss to Southern Maine (23-19) in last year's LEC championship game, collected double-digit strikeouts for the sixth time in 11 starts this year and moved the No. 1 nationally-ranked Warriors to within two wins of their tenth LEC tournament title.
Eastern, which has won ten straight and 25 of its last 26, meets third-seeded University of Massachusetts Boston (26-15) Friday in the winners' bracket final at noon. The Beacons blanked Southern Maine, 7-0, Wednesday and defeated second-seeded Rhode Island College, 11-6, Thursday night.
The Eastern-UMass Boston winner will be the tournament's only unbeaten team and moves into Saturday's championship round needing one win. The loser must play an elimination game Friday night in order to stay alive.
The Beacons are the only team in LEC history to win as many as three straight LEC tournament titles (2017-19), while Eastern's nine LEC tournament titles are the most by any team in conference history.
The shutout win is the second in two days for Eastern in the LEC tournament while the shutout loss is the second straight for Southern Maine and eliminates the Huskies. Eastern defeated sixth-seeded Plymouth State University, 6-0, Wednesday behind the combined shutout of senior Bryan Albee (Killingly) and graduate student Jack Wallace (Winthrop, MA) while Southern Maine had dropped a 7-0 decision to UMass Boston.
Oldham faced six batters over the minimum, throwing 87 of his 199 pitches for strikes. He did not walk a batter after issuing a free pass to Arlo Pike leading off the second inning. All of the hits he allowed were singles.
Oldham, who retired the final eight batters in order, allowed two hits twice in an inning. After allowing consecutive one-out singles in the fourth, he got a double play to end the threat, with graduate first baseman Josh Tower (Auburn, MA) throwing out Pike attempting to take home on an overthrow to first. With Eastern leading 5-0 in the seventh, Oldham gave up singles around a strikeout, but fanned the Huskies' No. 8 and No. 9 batter to extinguish the threat.
Tower was driven in by junior leadoff hitter Zach Donahue (South Windsor) after opening the third with a double off the left field fence for the first run of the game and the Warriors added four runs in the middle innings that chased USM sophomore starter Bryce Afthim (4-3). Senior centerfielder Ryan Bagdasarian's (Glastonbury) 99th career hit plated two runs with two out in the fifth and an outfield error and junior second baseman Brent Cosculluela's (Miami) infield single made it 5-0 in the sixth.
Senior All-America Luke Broadhurst (Stafford) doubled twice for the Warriors and Bagdasarian's two-run single pushed his hitting streak to 11.