Today: Mar 28, 2024

Baseball drops double header

Matt GadSports Writer

The Owls were swept Saturday in a home-opening doubleheader to Franklin Pierce in two 11-inning affairs, falling to 9-11 on the season so far.

In the first game, freshman Brandon White threw seven innings of three-hit, eight-strikeout pitches but the offense only mustered two runs in a 5-2 extrainning defeat. In the second the pitching was strong as well, with senior transfer Ronnie Rossomando tossing near similar numbers, with eight strikeouts of his own, over seven and a third.

“I thought our pitchers pitched really well today,” coach Tim Shea said. “We just have to play better; we scored five runs in our last 31 innings.”

After going down 2-0 in game one, senior shortstop Jim Palmer dumped a single into right to plate junior outfielder Nolan Cloutier. The game stayed at 2-1 until the bottom of the ninth when junior third baseman Connor Redahan came around to score.

“Coach keeps talking to us about our approaches and hunting fastballs. I tried to lay off the off-speed stuff but I thought I swang pretty well today,” Redahan said.

He came away with a run and a hit in the first game and finished with a hit and an RBI in game two, while Palmer was 3-for-4 to start the afternoon.

“We need to play a complete game,” Shea said. “We have had good pitching; we just are not hitting like we would like to.”

At the begining of the season, while the team played out-of-state, the Owls’ offense was electric at the plate. They scored 16 runs Feb. 16 against Florida National, 15 against Molloy Feb. 23 and completely demolished Caldwell, 22-2, March 14.

However, since getting back from the Florida road trip, the team is 0-3 with two losses and a 1-0 losing performance at Bridgeport March 20, where junior starter Nate Carney dazzled for six innings and only gave up two hits and two walks over four strikeouts. He was charged with an earned run when Bridgeport’s Patrick Palmer had an RBI single in the fifth.

Shea said the team just needs to win the divisional games. They have Adelphi on March 27, a team that’s already eclipsed more than ten wins, and then a double header against Saint Rose on March 30.

“We either hit well and do not pitch or we pitch well and we do not hit but we have a great bunch of guys and just need to keep plugging along,” Rossomando said. “It is going to turn around for us really soon.”

The back half of the doubleheader with the Hawks featured Franklin Pierce’s Anthony Matarazzo matching Rossomando with eight strikeouts, over his respective six innings of work, and the Owls were the first team to score when Cloutier had an RBI single in the fourth.

The game was then more a of a back-and-forth contest until Redahan forced extra innings off a base hit in the ninth, scoring Palmer, before defensive miscues gave the Hawks a 6-3 victory.

“We need to start hitting in the right time and in the right place and come up with those clutch hits,” Redahan said. “We need to do that in order to win games like these because, especially in these conference games, we need to come up clutch.”

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