Box Score NEWARK, DEL – Felician University baseball sits as the 7th seed at the NCAA East Regional Tournament following their championship win over N#1 Post University last weekend. The Golden Falcons opened up the event against the #2 Seed and host, Goldey-Beacom College for the second contest of the night.
The green-and-gold had a strong second inning as they recorded three runs on a Julian Uejima (River Edge, NJ) 2 RBI double and a Haiden Walters (Coral Springs, FL) at bat. The starting pitcher for the squad was Mike Caldon (Matawan, NJ) who halted the Lightning offense through four innings, however, in bottom half of the fifth, the game momentum shifted in favor of the hosts.
The Lightning's aggressive baserunning and a couple of singles put them back into the contest to ultimately take the lead, 4-3, by the end of the fifth. Through the next few innings, the Golden Falcons could not grasp a runner in scoring position to tie or even take the lead to secure the win.
In the ninth inning, Felician had one more shot to force a bottom nine or extra innings. Jose David Medrano (North Bergen, NJ) clinched a single to center field to start the Golden Falcon offense which put one on the basepaths. Hakim Salaam (Vineland, NJ) pinch ran for the catcher and was shifted to second on a sacrifice bunt to then reach third with two outs left.
Walters battled at the plate to equalize the score. With approximately a ten pitch at bat, the Lightning posted the final out of the evening to hand the Golden Falcons its first loss of the event.
Uejima went 1-3 with 2 RBIs while Medrano, Dauri Genao (West New York, NJ) and Cole Porter (River Vale, NJ) went 1-4. Caldon pitched 4.0 innings to surrender four runs but struck out five.
The baseball squad is back in action during the elimination round tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm against Queens (N.Y.). During the regular season, the green-and-gold are 0-2 against the Knights and are looking to stay alive and advance into Saturday to play the winner of Goldey-Beacom and Le Moyne.
