'GORHAM, Maine -- Junior right-hander Jake Tenney (Surry, N.H./Monadnock) came out the winner in a pitchers' duel, firing 7.2 scoreless innings, to lead the Keene State College Owls to a 2-0 win over the University of Massachusetts Boston Beacons in the second game of the 2006 Little East Conference Baseball Championship Wednesday at Towers Field on the Gorham campus.

With their third consecutive win, the second-seeded Owls improve to 29-12.  UMass Boston, the fifth seed, had its four-game win streak snapped and drops to 19-16.  Keene State will play the winner of the Eastern Connecticut State University on Thursday (May 12) at 3:00 p.m. in the second round of the LEC championship.  The Beacons will face UMass Dartmouth Thursday morning starting at 9:00 a.m. in an elimination game.  UMass Dartmouth fell to Southern Maine 10-1 in the first game of the tournament.

Tenney (5-1) held the Beacons to just five hits and did not give up a walk to earn his fifth win of the season.  Sophomore Greg Ford (Nashua, N.H./Nashua), who came on in relief of Tenney in the eighth inning, picked up his seventh save of the season.  Ford gave up two hits in 1.1 innings of work while pitching his way out of a jam in the top of the ninth inning.

UMass Boston junior southpaw Jaime Soto (Peabody, Mass./Peabody) took the loss for the Beacons despite a fine performance on the mound.  Soto (3-2) scattered four hits and gave up two runs over eight innings with four walks and five strikeouts.

Keene State scored the only runs of the game in the first inning.  After back-to-back walks to freshmen Jeff Perkins (Dunbarton, N.H./Goffstown) and James Chevalier (Amherst, N.H./Souhegan), the Owls used an RBI grounder by senior Jeremy Schilling (Centerville, Mass./Barnstable) to plate  Perkins for its first run of the game.  Chevalier came around to score the  second run on a single ripped up the middle by junior John Grainger (Keene, N.H./Keene).

UMass Boston threatened to tie the score in the late innings.  In the eighth, the Beacons had runners on second and third with two outs, following singles from sophomore Ryan Oshima (La Jolla, Calif./La Jolla) and junior Bob Kniffen (Halifax, Mass./Silver Lake) and a successful double steal.  However, Ford got a fly ball to center field to end the inning.

The Beacons again tried to play the spoiler in the ninth, with runners on first and third with no outs, but Ford again worked his way out of the jam for the win.  After yielding back-to-back singles to junior Bryan Curran (Brockton, Mass./Brockton) and junior Sean Ketterer (Plymouth, Mass./Plymouth), Ford retired the next two batters on strikeouts.  Ford loaded the bases hitting sophomore Derrick Plante (Medford, Mass./Medford Vocational) with a pitch, but recovered to get a ground out to end the game.

(Courtesy of USM Sports Information)