BANGOR, Maine – The fourth-seeded Eastern Connecticut State University softball team scored five runs with two out in the fifth and stayed alive in the 2021 NCAA Division III Bangor, ME Regional Tournament by silencing top seed and host Husson University, 9-1, in a second-round game of the double-elimination tournament Saturday morning at O'Keefe Field.
The game ended due to the eight-run rule after Division III Player-of-the-Year candidate
Brooke Matyasovsky (Orange) belted her second home run of the game leading off the bottom of the sixth inning, giving the Warriors their 15
th mercy-rule victory this year.
Less than 24 hours after surrendering a six-run lead in the sixth inning in an opening 10-9 loss to third-seeded Brandeis University, Eastern (31-3) won its tenth game in its last 11 outings, snapping Husson's (28-2) 21-game winning streak and sending the Eagles into the losers' bracket. Husson is ranked first in the New England Region, Eastern fifth.
Eastern was scheduled to play an elimination game later Saturday at approximately 2:45 p.m. against sixth-seeded Endicott College (20-3), which followed a 12-5, six-inning loss to Husson Friday by completing a 2-1 win over second-seeded Babson College Saturday morning in a game which had begin Friday.
Leading 3-1 against Husson, Eastern broke the game open in the fifth with five runs – four of them unearned -- on three hits and an error, pushing across all of its run after there were two out and junior shortstop
Julia SanGiovanni (East Haven) on first after being hit by a pitch for the 31
st time in her career. Freshman second baseman
Sarah Remillard (Grafton, MA), junior leftfielder and No. 9 hitter
Laura Zenk (Hermon, ME) and graduate centerfielder
Cassie Woods (Mystic) all drove in runs with singles, with Woods plating the final two with the 100
th collegiate hit of her career, 54 of them coming in three years at Keene State College.
Sophomore
Alyssa Vilchez's (Brampton, Ont.) one-out single in the second inning scored SanGiovanni (leadoff double) to tie the game and Matyasovsky launched a two-run home run – plating Woods who had singled with one out – to give Eastern the lead for good, 3-1.
Matyasovsky, one of 15 finalists nationwide for the NFCA National Player-of-the-Year Award, moved within one of All-America third baseman Arielle Cooper's season record of 16 home runs, set in 2013. Matyasovsky is third all-time with 25 career home runs, 15 behind Cooper' 40 and three behind four-time All-America Molly Rathbun's 28.
It was Matyasovsky's third two-home run game this year.
In her first NCAA start, junior righty
Carley Stoker (Sandy Creek, NY) improved to 16-0 this year, breaking the personal ten-game winning streak of Husson sophomore righty Sydney Ames (13-2). Stoker scattered four hits, fanned two and walked two in posting her 13
th complete game in 18 starts, and shut out the Eagles after Ames opened the game with a single, moved to third on a wild pitch and sacrifice bunt, and scored on a ground ball to SanGiovanni at short.
Ames, who pitched a three-hitter to win the North Atlantic Conference championship game, had lost a two-hitter back on March 27 for her only setback until Friday. She gave up five earned runs on nine hits, walked four and struck out one in her 11
th complete games in 15 starts. Until Friday, she had allowed only one home run in 80 innings this season.
In her first NCAA appearance Friday, Stoker walked seven and was charged with five runs in five relief inning, but took a 9-4 lead into the seventh inning in a non-decision.
Woods, Matyasovsky and SanGiovanni each had two hits, with Woods and Matyasovsky combining for five RBI.
The win was Eastern's third in four NCAA tournament meetings between the programs. The Warriors shut out the Eagles behind Rathbun in regional opening-round games en route to regional championships in 2010 and 2011 before Husson blanked Eastern in an opening-round game at the Norton, MA Regional in 2015.
