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MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The NESCAC East #4 seed Tufts University baseball team split their double header on Saturday, forcing a game three in their best-of-three NESCAC Quarterfinal series at Middlebury College.
Tufts (24-11, 6-6 NESCAC East) fell just short on a walk-off in game one, losing 4-3 but came back and earned a 22-9 game two victory to force a game three on Sunday morning for a ticket to Championship Weekend.
Middlebury (25-11, 10-2 NESCAC West) was the first on the board in game one, scoring two runs in the second inning on a Jack Stolper two-run home run to center field, scoring Andrew Ashley who led off the inning with a single. Tufts answered in the fourth with a Miles Reid solo home run, but Middlebury got the run back in the bottom half of the inning on a Sammy Smith solo shot.
The home run streak continued in the sixth inning, when Connor Flavin sent a solo homer over the center field fence to make it a one-run game. Ben Leonard tied it up later in the inning with an rbi double to the left center gap to score Connor Bowman, who walked earlier in the inning.
The game saw scoreless seventh and eighth innings, and Middlebury pitcher George Goldstein shut down the Jumbos' lineup in order in the top of the ninth, sending the game to the bottom of the ninth with a tie score. Smith led off with an infield single and advanced to second on a Stolper sacrifice bunt. He would eventually score the game-winning run when Zip Malley hit a walk-off rbi single to center to end game one at 4-3 in favor of Middlebury.
Cameron Mayer pitched every inning of the game one loss, allowing four earned runs on nine hits with 13 strikeouts. Reid led Tufts' offense with a 2-for-4 game with a home run and Connor Bowman was the only other Jumbo with multiple hits on the day, finishing 2 for 3 with a run scored. Connor Flavin finished 1 for 2 with a home run.
Tufts scored in every inning except for three in game two, including a nine-run first inning. They finished with 19 hits and seven players with multi-hit games. DeMaria led the offense going 4 for 5 with three runs scored, three rbis and a home run. Leonard, Flavin, Bowman and Patrick Solomon all finished with three rbis as well, while Reid and Flavin both hit their second home runs of the day.
Flavin's home run came in the first inning, driving in three runs, while Kyle Cortese drove in two runs on a single, and scoring on a Solomon single in the next at-bat. Leonard hit a two-rbi single up the middle later in the inning and Reid scored the ninth run of the inning on a wild pitch.
After a two-run top of the third inning that featured back-to-back Tufts home runs from Reid and Leonard, Middlebury fought their way back in the game with a three-home run and eight-run bottom half. Nathan Samii hit two home runs in the inning, leading it off with a solo home run and blasting a three-run shot over the center field fence later in the inning. John Collins also had a two-run home run in the inning, scoring Alec Ritch who hit a two-run double in the prior at-bat.
The Jumbos scored seven runs combined in the fifth and sixth innings before going scoreless in the seventh for just the third time of the game. Three of the five fifth-inning runs for Tufts came on wild pitches and a bases-loaded walk, and Peter DeMaria hit a two-run homer in the sixth to make it 18-9. Middlebury added their final run in the bottom of the fifth on a Stolper solo home run.
Connor Podeszwa, the winning pitcher for the 'Bos, shut down the Middlebury lineup for the remainder of the game and finished with just one earned run on four hits in 6.0 innings pitched with four strikeouts. The Jumbos added three in the eighth on a DeMaria rbi single and a Bowman two-rbi single down the line, and one run in the ninth inning on a Jackson Duffy rbi single to clinch the 22-9 victory. The Panthers used seven different pitchers in the ball game and Alex Rosario was credited with the loss, throwing 0.1 innings, allowing seven earned runs on five hits.
These two teams will now play one more game on Sunday, May 8th at 11 am to determine who moves on to Championship Weekend hosted by Trinity College on May 13-15.
Written by Tim O'Brien, Athletic Communications Intern
