Box Score In the second game of the day Thursday, top-seeded University of Southern Maine (36-7) dropped Eastern (30-12-1) into the losers' bracket by crushing the Warriors, 22-9 in the all-important winners' bracket final at the USM Baseball Stadium.
The Huskies are the only remaining undefeated team and need one win to capture their second straight LEC tournament title.
Saturday morning in an elimination game, Eastern will face the winner of a suspended game which began Friday afternoon between No. 5 seed Massachusetts Dartmouth and No. 4 seed Massachusetts Boston. The visiting team, UMass Dartmouth led that game 20-5, while batting with one out and nine runs in in the eighth, before it was suspended due to darkness. That game will resume Saturday at 9 a.m.
The Eastern-UMass Dartmouth winner must defeat undefeated Southern Maine twice to claim the championship.
Ranked No. 1 in New England and No. 9 nationally, Southern Maine sent 11 batters to the plate in the first inning against Eastern, scoring six runs on eight hits, with the first six batters coming around to score on the way to their third straight tournament victory and 11th win in their last 12 outings. The Huskies battered four Eastern pitchers for 25 hits (seven for extra bases) and led 22-0 after six innings before the Warriors scored nine runs in their final at-bats on eight hits.
Forrest Chadwick was 5-for-5 with four runs scored for the Huskies, Nick Grady 4-for-4 with five RBI and three runs scored and Tucker White 3-for-4 witih four runs scored and three RBI.
Junior third baseman Mike Vaccarelli (Wolcott) paced Eastern's ten-hit attack with three hits and two RBI while sophomore catcher Cory DeMedeiros (Fall River, MA) came off the bench with two hits and senior rightfielder Tyler Caserta (Straford) drove in two runs and scored two.
Eastern's tournament victories have come against UMass Dartmouth and UMass Boston. The Warriors outslugged UMass Dartmouth, 10-9, in Wednesday's opener and routed UMass Boston, 9-1, in a game which began Thursday afternoon and was completed Friday morning.
