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Box Score 2 WILMINGTON, Del. – No. 5 seed Felician College finished in third place in the 2013 Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference Baseball Championship Tournament, hosted by Wilmington (Del.) University at Frawley Stadium. Felician earned an elimination-game victory, 2-0, on Friday afternoon over No. 2 seed Dominican (N.Y.) College before bowing out in the losers' bracket final later Friday evening, 13-6, to No. 6 seed Chestnut Hill College.
The Golden Falcons won seven of their last 14 games and finished with an overall won-lost record of 21-32. It was Felician's eighth consecutive season with at least 20 victories
Against Dominican early Friday, sophomore left-hander Jerry Vasto (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.) and freshman righty John Holland (Jackson, N.J.) combined to pitch a four-hit shutout. Vasto (3-1) tossed six innings and gave up three hits with seven strikeouts and no walks.
The Golden Falcons had early difficulty solving Dominican junior lefty Ryan Calby (Huntington Station, N.Y.) before breaking through in the sixth. With two outs, Jay Collazo (Wall, N.J.) was hit by a pitch, and freshman designated hitter Matt Caposio (Staten Island, N.Y.) came through with a run-scoring double in the left-center field gap. In the seventh, Felician junior shortstop Aaron Brill (West Palm Beach, Fla.) chased Calby (3-3) with an RBI single, again with two out.
Dominican (28-22) put its first two runners on base in the bottom of the seventh on a strikeout-wild pitch and a hit batsman. Holland entered and induced a pop-up and fielder's choice grounder before issuing a walk to load the bases. He then escaped the jam with a strikeout. Holland finished the game for his fifth save, tossing a perfect eighth before working around a double and a base on balls in the ninth.
Brill went 3 for 5 and Scott De Jong (North Haledon, N.J.) was 2 for 4 for the Golden Falcons. Calby worked through 117 pitches in the loss, striking out five and allowing seven hits and one walk over 6 2/3 frames.
Felician then had to wait through the winners' bracket final, which was claimed by No. 1 seed Wilmington, 10-0. Chestnut Hill dropped to the losers' bracket final and had to immediately come back and play again against the Golden Falcons. After falling behind, 2-0, after three innings, the Griffins scored in their final six at-bats.
Brill blasted a one-out RBI triple in the third off of CHC senior right-hander Robert Hopkins (Philadelphia, Pa.), who was starting for the second consecutive day. The hit extended Brill's hitting streak to 15 games, eclipsing the Felician record of 14 set by Dave Schoer in 2007. Brill scored on Mike Farrell's (Red Bank, N.J.) single up the middle.
But after not picking up a hit in the first three innings, Chestnut Hill (20-26) amassed 13 runs on 11 hits against five Felician pitchers over the final six. The Griffins took the lead for good in the fourth inning, knocking out Golden Falcon starter Matthew Facendo (Hazlet, N.J.) (5-4) by putting their first five runners on base. Raymond Puskar's (Green Lane, Pa.) two-run double tied the contest, and Taylor Steen (New Egypt, N.J.) followed with a go-ahead two-bagger.
CHC extended its lead with single runs in the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas, then erased all hope of a Golden Falcon comeback by tallying four times in the eighth. The rally took the worry away for the Griffins when Felician came up with four of its own runs in the home half of the eighth.
Right-hander Micah Winterstein (Philadelphia, Pa.) (3-1) was credited with the victory after tossing scoreless innings in the 4th, 5th, and 6th. CHC's 3-4-5 trio of Brendan Looby (Sewell, N.J.), Puskar, and Steen combined to go 7 for 12 at the plate, score five runs, and drive in eight. Brill, Farrell and Caposio picked up two hits each for Felician.
CHC earned a re-match with Wilmington in the championship round on Saturday.
The CACC Tournament schedule and results can be viewed at http://www.caccathletics.org/sports/bsb/2012-13/releases/20130501-baseballchampionshippairings.
