RYAN FLYNN — General Assignment Reporter
Huddled on the field after nearly six hours of doubleheader play, Southern’s baseball team listened to an impassioned speech by head coach Tim Shea. Despite just watching his team notch a dominant 7-0 win over Queen’s College that brought their record to 8-3, Shea appeared livid.
“If you’re content being 8-3 right now, that is a joke,” Shea called out to his team.
The Owls had just returned from playing Queen’s College in New York, where they crushed the Knights 16- 1. In their home opener in New Haven, the Owls started right where they had left off, scoring a run in each of the first three innings.
However, Southern surrendered this lead in the sixth inning when the Knights scored three runs, the last of which coming on a passed ball. The game remained tied until the top of the ninth, when the Knights scored the go-ahead run on a two-out single.
Despite loading the bases in the bottom half of the inning, the Owls could not strike back. Sophomore third baseman T.K. Kiernan flied out deep to right, and the 4-3 loss ended the Owls three-game winning streak.
“It was a tough loss; we let them hang around,” senior shortstop and leadoff man Kyle Cummings said. “Rocco [Cundari] pitched a great game. We should’ve came away with the victory. We let them hang around, we made a few mental errors in the field and we let them come back.”
In the second game of the doubleheader, the Owls made sure that such a comeback would not happen again. Southern scored early and often, putting up two runs in the first by way of a walk, a single and a Queen’s College error.
They would tack on another run in the second inning with a two-out, based-loaded walk by senior outfielder Bryan Dorsey. The Owls then blew the game wide open in the fifth, scoring three runs by way of a Michael Cleary single, a T.J. Shea double and a Greg Pacelli single. They would score their final run in the seventh inning, when Cleary hit a triple and then scored on a sac fly.
The Owls pitching was also strong. Starting pitcher Ryan Yerina, a senior from Trumbull, Conn., had another very good day to follow up the 87-pitch complete game in his last outing. The right-hander surrendered just four hits, one walk and no earned runs in six innings.
“My location was on when I needed it to be and I think that’s what really helped me out today,” Yerina said.
Kiernan found redemption for his fly out to end the first game, going 2-for-3 with a run scored in the second game. Centerfielder Michael Cleary, a junior, also went 2-for-3 with two runs scored and an RBI. Cummings played well in both games, hitting 6-for- 9 overall.
“On our sign out there, it clearly states, our objective is always to try to be perfect.” Shea said. “You chase perfection, try to catch excellence. And we need to start doing that. We need to really start to do that. Now we have an eight game swing in Florida and, you know, hopefully we put it together and come back real strong for conference play.”
