ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Nine consecutive batters reached safely after there was one out in the seventh inning and the No. 1 nationally-ranked and top-seeded Eastern Connecticut State University baseball team hit three home runs for the second straight day Saturday and moved into the championship round of the NCAA Division III Rochester, NY Regional with a 17-4 win over third-seeded Middlebury College at Towers Field on the University of Rochester campus.
With its 15th straight win and 29th victory in its last 30 outings, Eastern (41-3) moves into the championship round of the four-team, double-elimination regional Sunday at 11 a.m., needing one victory in two tries to qualify for next weekend's best-of-three Super Regional . The Warriors will face the winner of Saturday night's elimination game between Middlebury (30-13) and fourth-seeded Swarthmore College (23-18). Eastern opened the tournament Friday by snapping a seven-game NCAA losing streak with a 10-7 win over Swarthmore.
Eastern trailed 4-2 after four innings but scored the final 13 runs of the game, breaking a 4-4 with nine runs on nine hits in the seventh, when nine straight batters reached safely on seven hits and two walks off three Middlebury pitchers.
The team's win total is its highest since the 2003 and 2004 squads won a record 43 games and the 17 runs are the most in an NCAA tournament since 2009.
Graduate righty Tommy Benincaso (Norwalk) pitched into the eighth inning for the first time in his career, getting the first two outs of the frame before being lifted with a runner on first and his team leading, 16-4. Benincaso, who has pitched at least six innings in all eight of his starts this year, was backed by a 19-hit attack – equaling the most Eastern hits in a game in the last 23 contests. He allowed only two earned runs on seven hits with seven strikeouts and two walks.
Eastern sent 14 batters to the plate in the seventh inning, with senior catcher Matt Malcom (East Lyme) hitting his tenth home run of the year to drive in the first two runs and later singling in another run later in the inning. Graduate first baseman Josh Tower (Auburn, MA), junior shortstop Zach Donahue (South Windsor) and senior centerfielder Ryan Bagdasarian (Glastonbury) all drove in runs with doubles in the inning and No. 8-9 hitters Noah Plantamuro (Bristol) and Jason Claiborn (Prospect) both plated runs with bunts
All-Americas John Mesagno (Tappan, NY) and Luke Broadhurst (Stafford) hit their 11th home runs of the season. Mesagno gave the Warriors a short-lived 2-0 lead with his two-out blast in the top of the third and Broadhurst cut the Panthers' lead to one, 4-3, with a solo shot on the first pitch he saw in the fifth.
The Warriors tied the game, 4-4, with a run in the sixth on senior DH Jack Rich's (Meriden) leadoff double and an infield single by Claiborn.
Every player who came to bat contributed at least one hit. Rich, Mesagno, Plantamuro and Claiborn all had three hits, with Malcom reaching four times with a home run, single and two walks and Mesagno reaching four times with a home run, double, single and walk. Donahue doubled and tripled.
With three home runs, five doubles and a triple, nearly half of Eastern's 19 hits went for extra bases.
Although the Warriors had reached the championship round of 24 regional tournaments in the first 33 seasons of the NCAA Division III championship, they had not until this year returned to the title series since 2009, when they lost, 5-4, to Trinity College at the Eastern Baseball Stadium.