Maine and Northeastern. Archrivals. The two top baseball teams in the America East according to pre-season rankings. And, year after year, opponents for the conference opener. Last weekend the Huskies grabbed the season series edge on the Black Bears taking two of three games at Friedman Diamond.
After splitting the Friday doubleheader, Devin Monds led NU in the rubber match, going the full nine innings and allowing a pair of runs on six hits. The junior righty was honored as the America East pitcher of the week for his performance.
Trailing 2-1 going into the bottom of the ninth inning, senior captain Brad Czarnowski laced a bases-loaded, two-run single to plate Matt Morizio and Eric Murray and gave the Huskies the 3-2 victory.
Third baseman Tim Bush led off the inning with a single and was replaced at first by Jeff Nutting. Nutting was erased at second when Morizio’s sacrifice bunt attempt was gobbled up by Maine catcher Aaron Izaryk. Murray then drew a base on balls and Mike Steinberg was hit by a pitch to load the bases for Czarnowski. As has been the case for most of the season, the captain came through.
“Brad Czarnowski couldn’t be more of a valued leader at this point,” said coach Neil McPhee. “We’re talking three, four, maybe five times that he’s done what he did on Saturday. He’s the captain of the team, a leader. The competitive approach that he takes; it’s inspirational to everyone on the bench and in the lineup. And when he wins a ball game, he wins it. That ball was crushed.”
Steinberg got the Huskies on the board in the first inning. The senior designated hitter led off the game with a homerun, and finished the game 2-for-3 with a walk.
Maine scrapped out a pair of runs in the fourth to take over the lead. Greg Creek and Joel Barrett reached via single, and Creek scored when Matt McGraw lifted a sac fly to left field. Monds walked the next batter, Izaryk, and then balked to put runners on second and third. Barrett scored on a wild pitch, but Monds settled down and retired the next two batters on groundouts.
Monds took over the game after that, and the Black Bears would never threaten again, collecting only two hits over the next five innings.
“The pitching has just been so consistent,” McPhee said. “[Monds] pitched such a strong game, not just a strong game, but he got better inning after inning. It was from the fifth or sixth inning on that he just completely shut down their lineup, and gave us the opportunity to do what we did in the ninth inning.”
The Huskies rallied from a 3-0 deficit in the opening game of Friday’s doubleheader to cut the deficit to 3-2, but that was how the game ended, with Justin Hedrick taking the loss after allowing three runs in seven innings.
Northeastern strung together four singles in the fifth inning to plate a pair of runs. Bush led off the inning with a hit and moved to center when Miguel Paquette lined a single to center. Bush scored on a line drive over the third baseman’s head by Nutting and Czarnowski drove in Paquette with the fourth hit of the inning. Arman Sidhu popped out and Chris Emanuele grounded out to first to end the Husky threat. Two men were left on base.
NU stranded a pair of runners in each of the next two innings without picking up a run, lacking the clutch hit to tie the game.
“The hitting is still sporadic and yet good pitching is going to shut down good hitting,” McPhee said. “And for the most part this year we have faced very strong pitching. I said it at the beginning of the year, we are going to face a lot of one-run, low-scoring games, and that has born true to this point of the season.”
Husky hitters roared back in the second game of the doubleheader, whacking around reigning America East pitcher of the year Mike MacDonald around to the tune of seven runs over seven innings. Senior righty Jordan Thomson allowed one run over his seven innings, giving NU the 7-1 victory.
Miguel Paquette singled in two runs in the bottom of the first to put NU up 2-0. The Black Bears halved the lead in the top of the second, but where quickly put back in their place when Czarnowski cranked a homer to lead off the bottom of the second. The Huskies pushed two more runs across the plate on two fielder’s choices, opening up a 5-1 lead.
Emanuel and Jeff Heriot led off the fifth with singles, and scored when Sidhu doubled down the left field line to account for the final tally.
McPhee noted that, as has been the case all season, pitching and defense led the way for Northeastern.
“The other thing that was very important was defense, particularly [shortstop] Arman Sidhu and Matt Morizio behind the plate,” he said. “They played almost perfect defensive games to complement the pitching we had. Arman had couple of plays that really saved innings, saved runs, maybe even saved games. And Matt, I don’t think he had one passed ball all weekend, maybe one wild pitch, but he was exceptional behind the plate.”
With the weekend behind them, the Huskies were happy to settle for a 2-of-3 weekend against what will be some of the stiffest competition all year.
“To start the season off with our main, pardon the pun, competitor in the conference, every single year, we are the two teams that see each other as rivals to ending up as conference champions,” McPhee said. “It doesn’t happen that way all the time, with one of us as conference champions but that’s the way we see it.”
Monds, the game three victor, agreed.
“It was great for our club to get going on a roll and take it all the way through the conference tournament.”
