WEST HARTFORD, Conn. – The Keene State College baseball team has found Fiondella Field – the former home of head coach
Justin Blood at the University of Hartford – to their liking so far this weekend. Hot-hitting
Jonathan Chatfield cracked two home runs in a five-RBI day while
Evan Cali and
Shea Zina also went deep in support of a strong start by Cam Thomas as the Owls rolled along to a 14-9 win over Wheaton College (Mass.) on Saturday afternoon.
It was the second consecutive day KSC (6-8) has scored in double-digits, and also the second time in a row they used a huge inning to turn the complexion of a game. Yesterday, in a 12-6 win over Hartford, the Owls used an eight-run sixth inning on the heels of a three-run fifth to build an 11-3 lead that was never seriously threatened. Today, against Wheaton (6-7), the initial six batters and seven of the first eight reached base in the third to help KSC run out to a 7-0 lead against Chris Carbonara, who was chased after just 2.1 innings. The inning began with a four-pitch walk to
Anthony DiGiacomo and snowballed rapidly for the Lyons, who were coming off an 8-6 win over Hartford to get back to .500.
Luciano Frezza followed with an RBI double to put the Owls in front 1-0 and
Luke Anderson brought back around the top of the order by smoking a ball of Carbonara's foot for a base hit. Cali continued the hit parade, blasting a three-run shot to the opposite field off a tall fence well beyond the left center wall to make it 4-0. Keene State was far from done, as singles into center for
Evan McCue and
Tommy Ahlers provided the Owls another threat, and Chatfield cashed in, walloping the second three-run shot of the inning well beyond the 370-foot sign in right center to make it 7-0. He also hit a no-doubter in the fifth to make it 9-1, polishing off his third consecutive multi-hit game and fifth in the past seven. In the last three, he is 9-for-15 with two double and three home runs, and since a 2-for-20 start to the season, he is hitting .436 (17-for-39). Chatfield has raised his season average to .322, joining Ahlers (.433), DiGiacomo (.333), and Anderson (.327) as qualified hitters over .300 in KSC's lineup.
The run support was more than enough for Thomas, who whiffed eight and allowed just three hits and one earned run in six innings while improving to 2-1. When the game was close early, he whiffed a pair in the first to strand a runner at third and then fired 1-2-3 innings in both the second (struck out the side) and third. After that, he was able to attack with a big lead and give KSC length from their starter for a second consecutive day following a 6.1 inning, five strikeout outing from
Jake Jachym on Friday. Unsurprisingly, it has led to a winning formula in a stretch where the Owls play four consecutive days.
Zina joined in on the home run fun in the bottom of the seventh, roping a line drive to left that also plated Ahlers, who tripled as part of another three-hit day to make it 11-2.
Wheaton got as close as five (11-6) after Casey Wensley hit a three-run home run of his own on an 0-2 count in the top of the eighth, but the Owls responded with a three-run bottom half that featured an RBI double by McCue and run-scoring singles from Zina and DiGiacomo to make it 14-6.
All nine of the Owls' starters recorded a hit, with six different players finishing with multiple hits including
Hamilton Barnes (2-2) off the bench in Zina's spot.
"I thought we swung the bats very well," said Keene State head coach
Justin Blood. "Cam Thomas attached and got a lot of swings and misses. It is important that we finish the weekend with another solid effort tomorrow."
Wheaton, a program that won 42 games two years ago before falling to then-No. 1 Johns Hopkins University in three games in a Super Regional and reached the NEWMAC tournament championship series last season with a win over national championship series participant Salve Regina University, was held to just three hits over the first seven innings.
KSC's pitching staff whiffed 11 Lyons in the game. It was the first meeting between the two programs since a 6-4 Wheaton win (ranked 11th nationally at the time) in Leesburg, Fla. The Owls had posted an important 7-6 win over a No. 5-ranked Lyons team in Keene two years prior. The two teams also met three times in the NCAA tournament in 2007 and 2008, with KSC winning two of the three.
The Owls close their weekend with another matchup against Hartford tomorrow (Sunday, March 23) at 1:00 p.m. before opening their home schedule on Wednesday, March 26 against Salem State University. KSC's Little East Conference slate begins next Saturday at home against Rhode Island College after the Owls had a league bye today when the other eight teams had their conference openers.
