Box Score HARWICH, Mass. -- An Eastern Connecticut State University baseball team which made plenty of noise in New England during the regular season slipped quietly out of the NCAA New England Regional Tournament Thursday morning, losing its second game in less than 20 hours, 6-2, to MIT at Whitehouse Field.
At right: The Warriors were left wondering 'what could have been' after being eliminated from the tournament Thursday morning.
After reaching the championship round of the New England regional every year in which it competed between 1981 and 2009, the Warriors exited early for the second straight time after losing two consecutive games for the first time this year.
Eastern was the first team eliminated in the eight-team double-elimination field.
Ranked No. 1 in New England and No. 10 nationally, top-seeded Eastern (32-9) was shocked in Wednesday's first round, 4-3 in 11 innings by upstart and No. 8 Mitchell College, then couldn't protect two early one-run leads in falling to fifth-seeded MIT (25-14) after dispatching the Engineers, 4-1, in 1 hour and 45 minutes two weeks ago at the Eastern Baseball Stadium.
"I thought that if we could put up a couple of runs early, it might settle us down a little bit and get us to the right place, but it just didn't work out that way," offered head coach Matt LaBranche, who was recently named Little East Conference Coach-of-the-Year and New England co-Coach-of-the-Year in his first season after leading the program to the No.1 rank in New England and No. 1 seed in the LEC tournament. "It was terribly, terribly disappointing how we played (in the tournament). Given how battle-tested we were, I never thought that there would be any one moment that was going to get to us. I apparently underestimated that."
Sophomore righty Patrick O'Neill (Thomaston) carried a four-hitter and 2-1 lead into the sixth inning against MIT before the Engineers strung together five of their game total of 11 hits to score four runs and chase O'Neill (5-1) in favor of junior lefty Matt D'Orsi (West Hartford). Nate Rodman's one-out RBI tied the game, and Parker Tew -- who had two of his team's four hits in the regular-season loss to Easterh -- gave the Engineers the lead for good, 4-2, with a two-run home run on the first pitch he saw from O'Neill. With two out, Karl Sorensen ended O'Neill's day with a double, and No. 9 hitter John Rea greeted D'Orsi with an RBI single through the left side on a 1-2 pitch to make it 5-2.
"Patrick gave us a chance to win -- like all of our top pitchers have this year -- but we just couldn't capitalize on our chances," commented LaBranche.
In his ninth start of the year, sophomore righty Nicholas Locascio (5-2) pitched his first complete game. Locascio allowed nine hits and one walk while fanning six. Locascio shut out Eastern over the final five innings after giving up single runs in the second and fourth that gave Eastern a pair of one-run leads. Junior rightfielder Kyle Hart (Guilford) drove in Eastern's only two runs with a single in the second and sacrifice fly in the fourth. Locascio retired the final four batters in order, getting a fine catch by leftfielder K.J. Parent to end Eastern's season.
After compiling a .300 team batting average during the regular season, Eastern managed to string together two consecutive hits only four times in two tournament games: in the first and 11th innings against Mitchell and in the fourth and sixth innings Thursday. Ranked fourth nationally in fielding, the Warriors commited six tournament errors, five coming in the first-round loss.
Senior leftfielder Nik Ververis (Plainfield) led Eastern in two tournament games by reaching eight times with five hits (two doubles), two walks and a hit-by-pitch, completing his two-year Eastern career with a 15-game hitting streak. He scored four of the team's five tournament runs. Senior third baseman Mike Vaccarelli (Wolcott) doubled on the first pitch he saw in the third inning to end his career on a 12-game hitting streak, and junior second baseman Corey Keane (Tolland) singled with two out in the fifth (later being thrown out stealing to end the inning) to give him a season-ending ten-game hitting streak.
