MANSFIELD, Conn. – Senior third baseman
Luke Broadhurst (Stafford) broke a tie with a two-out, two-run triple that highlighted a four-run sixth inning and carried the top-seeded Eastern Connecticut State University baseball team back from four runs down for an 8-7 victory over third-seeded University of Massachusetts Boston in the third round of the Little East Conference tournament Friday afternoon at the Eastern Baseball Stadium.
A winner of 12 straight and 26 of its last 27, No. 1 nationally-ranked Eastern (38-3) moves to within a game of its tenth LEC tournament title.
In Saturday's noon championship game, the Warriors will play the winner of Friday's late game between once-beaten UMass Boston and once-beaten fifth-seeded Massachusetts Dartmouth. If unbeaten Eastern loses the noon game Saturday, the teams will play a final deciding game at 3:30 p.m. to determine the automatic qualifier to the NCAA Division III tournament.
Eastern, which swept UMass Boston (26-16) at the Eastern Baseball Stadium on the final weekend of the regular season, fell behind, 5-1, after 3 ½ innings but rallied to win its second one-run decision in three tries this year and improve to 19-2 at home.
In the sixth, Eastern tied the game, 5-5, on junior second baseman
Brent Cosculluela's (Miami, FL) sacrifice fly. After ace reliever Josh Eastman was summoned, first-team All-America third baseman Broadhurst launched an 0-2 pitch into the right-centerfield gap to bring home junior shortstop
Zach Donahue (South Windsor) and sophomore rightfielder
Jason Clairborn (Prospect) to give Eastern a 7-5 lead. Senior catcher
Matt Malcom (East Lyme) added an insurance run with a single on the first pitch he saw from Eastman to make it 8-5.
Senior righty
Bryan Albee (Killingly) was summoned while UMass was scoring twice in the seventh but went the final 2 2/3 innings to record his fourth save of the year (to go along with a 10-0 record and lower his ERA to 1.23.
Making his staff-leading 19
th appearance of the year (11
th in relief) Albee allowed an RBI single in the seventh but got the final two outs. In the eighth, the Beacons put two runners aboard on an infield single and walk but Albee got a fly ball to center to end the threat. After allowing a leadoff single in the ninth, Albee got two ground balls and an infield popup to leave the tying run on base.
With Eastern trailing 5-3 in the fifth, senior centerfielder
Ryan Bagdasarian (Glastonbury) collected his 100
th hit in an Eastern uniform when he drove in Cosculluela (leadoff double) with two outs to pull the Warriors to within 5-4.
