MANSFIELD, CONN. 5/13/11 – Instead of moving on to the championship round of the Little East Conference baseball tournament, fourth seed Keene State College finds itself in must-win situation after dropping a tough 3-2 game to sixth seed Rhode Island College at Eastern Stadium in Mansfield Conn. on Friday.
After handily winning their first two-games of the tournament, the Owls (29-13) must return to play the winner of the game between top seed Eastern Conn. and fifth seed Southern Maine tonight (7 p.m.) and then win a pair against RIC on Saturday if they hope to capture the tournament title, their first since 2008.
The upstart Anchormen (20-18), who have already upset Eastern Conn., third seed UMass-Dartmouth and KSC, just need one win on Saturday to claim the LEC crown.
Rhode Island College scored the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth inning against Owl senior closer Corey Vogt (Suffield, Conn.). Junior J.P. Stone led off with a walk. A throwing error on sophomore's Kevin Carey (Wakefield, R.I.) bunt, allowed Stone to move to third. Stone came home on a wild pitch.
Junior Eric Blanchard (Warwick, R.I.) came into pitch the bottom of the ninth inning and retired the Owls in order to pick-up the save.
RIC went up 2-0 in the second on a solo home run by senior Gary Levesque (East Providence, R.I.). Their second run came in on an infield error, one of three committed by the Owls in the game.
After scoring 21 runs in its first two tournament games, Keene State had a hard time getting to RIC sophomore starter David Hoey (Lincoln, R.I.). The Owls got one run back in the sixth on senior Tyler DiPrato's first home run of the season, a drive that just made it over the right field fence. Diprato, who went 1-3 in the game, tied the KSC record for hits (74) in a season with his round-tripper. Jeremy Schillling also had 74 hits in the 2006 season.
Keene State tied the game in the seventh. Junior Juan Bisono (New Britain, Conn.) opened the inning with a walk. He moved to second on a freshman Nick Vita's (Spofford, N.H.) sacrifice and scored on freshman David Valley's (Essex Junction,Vt.) seeing-eye single up the middle. Valley had two of Keene State's six hits in the game.
Sophomore Chris Crutcher (Londonderry, N.H.) gave KSC a solid start, giving up two runs (one earned) on five hits while fanning five and walking one in his 4.1 innings of work. Sophomore Eric Perrault (Salem, N.H.) took over in the fifth, keeping RIC at bay and allowing KSC to get back into the game. He gave up just one hit in his 3.1 innings with five strikeouts and three walks. Perrault also turned in the defensive play of the game in the sixth inning when he made a diving catch of Stone's bunt attempt and doubled-up senior Justin Corso (Cranston, R.I.) at first.
Locating his fast ball and getting ahead of the Owls hitters, Hoey gave up two runs on six hits while striking out nine and giving up a walk. He improves his record to 3-5 on the season.
Rhode Island College lone LEC championship came in 2005.
