AUBURN, N.Y.  5/20/10 – The fifth seeded Keene State College baseball team lost to top seed Cortland State 12-4 in a NCAA regional tournament game played at Falcon Park in Auburn, N.Y. on Thursday.

            Keene State (27-16-1), which moves into the loser's bracket of the tournament, will need to beat third seed Oneonta State (29-12) on Friday (10 a.m.) if it hopes to stay alive in the championship.

            Trailing 2-0, the Owls tied the game in the bottom of the second on a two run single by junior Vinny Ganz (Waterbury, Conn.).

            After the red Dragons pulled ahead 3-2m in the top of the third, KSC came right back to tie the game again on a RBI single to right by junior Peter Burgio (Bolton, Conn.).

            The Owls took a 4-3 lead in the fourth on a RBI to left center by junior Tyler DiPrato (Suffield, Conn.).

            Cortland (34-8-1) broke the game open by scoring six runs in the sixth inning to go up 9-4.  "The sixth inning did us in," said KSC Coach Ken Howe.  "We made some errors that hurt us.  Cortland is a very solid team that takes advantage of other teams' mistakes."

            The Red Dragons added a run in the seventh inning and two more in the eighth.

            Keene State finished the game with 11 hits.  DiPrato went 3-5 while seniors Jesse Cahill (Cranston, R.I.) and Keith Patnode (Keene, N.H.) and Burgio each had two hits.

            Kevin Jackson went 4-4 with two RBIs and Jason Simone had two hits and three RBIs to lead the Red Dragon's 14 hit attack.

            Junior Kyle Davis (Rochester, N.H.) started for the Owls and took the loss (4-3).  He gave up five runs on eight hits with three walks in his 5.1 innings on the mound.

            Brendan Hourihan, who came into pitch in the fourth inning, was the winning pitcher for Cortland.

            "We need to come right back tomorrow and win a couple of games," said Howe.  "This team isn't ready to come home just yet."