By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, News Correspondent
The Virginia Commonwealth University Rams completed their sweep of the Huskies with a 10-3 win at Friedman Diamond Sunday.
The stage for the sweep was set with a 6-2 Huskies’ loss Friday afternoon and an 8-2 loss Saturday.
The Rams’ offense was too much for Huskies as they had 33 hits throughout the series, including 13 in the final game. Northeastern’s lineup only put forth six in the loss, 25 in the series.
With the sweep, the Huskies fall to 3-6 in the Colonial Athletic Association (12-10 overall).
The first day of April gave junior pitcher Kevin Ferguson his first loss of the season as he allowed six earned runs on 10 hits through five innings.
VCU Ffreshman pitcher Heath Dwyer was strong, pitching eight innings and only giving up three runs on just six hits.
“That kid today was really good,” NU assistance coach Mike Glavine said. “He had a good fastball, a good breaking ball, a lot of confidence on the mound. I was really impressed with him.”
Head coach Neil McPhee was ejected in the fourth inning for arguing with the home plate umpire.
The Huskies scored early in the first inning with an RBI single by junior designated hitter Jon Leroux. VCU quickly responded with junior outfielder Taylor Buran hitting his third home run of the season. The Rams scored again when junior catcher John Putress was charged with a passed ball allowing freshman infielder Vimael Machin to score.
The Huskies tied the score at 2 in the second inning when sophomore infielder Aaron Barbosa hit an RBI single off of Dwyer, bringing home sophomore outfielder Connor Lyons.
Besides a home run given up to Rob Fonseca in the seventh inning, he didn’t allow more Husky runs until he was relieved in the eighth inning.
“I honestly think we should of done a better job as a team hitting him but [Ferguson] did locate pretty well and he did what he needed to do today,” Barbosa said.
The Rams took the lead in the third inning behind senior catcher Nick Abraham’s two run single and didn’t look back as they scored two runs in each of the next three innings.
“[Sunday] especially, we made a bunch of mistakes that have been uncharacteristic of us all year. We made some errors and didn’t make some plays that we needed to,” Barbosa said. “First two games of the series we just got outplayed. We didn’t do anything spectacular but we didn’t do anything terrible.”
The Northeastern line-up pounded 13 hits off of VCU in the series opener Friday afternoon. They only scored two runs off those hits, one of them coming in the bottom of the eighth cutting the deficit to four, 6-2.
“Offensively, the trouble was with guys in scoring position which hasn’t been a problem for us this year. We’ve really swung the bats well but this weekend we didn’t so I got to give their pitching credit,” Glavine said.
Junior pitcher Kyle Haynes, who went the first five innings for VCU, got out of jams including a bases loaded jam in the third as the Huskies left six people on base through the first five innings.
Senior captain and pitcher Andrew Leenhouts only gave up one run – an RBI groundout to sophomore catcher Joey Cujas in the third – through the first seven innings.
The Rams broke through in the eighth and scored five runs off of four hits to push the lead to 6-1. Barbosa and freshman catcher Alex McKeon each had RBI’s in the 6-2 loss.
VCU used another big late inning in the second game of the series to defeat the Huskies 8-2.
Junior pitcher Dylan Maki only gave up one run until the sixth inning, when the Rams scored six runs to take a 7-1 lead. Four Rams had RBIs in the including Cujas with two.
Barbosa and Leroux each had two hits for the Huskies and Vosler contributed as well with an RBI.
“It’s just a matter of execution when you’re on the field,” Coach Glavine said. “The guys work really hard in practice and it’s a great group of guys and we’ve played well up until this weekend. It’s a disappointing weekend to be home and be swept like this.”
Northeastern will take the field at Rhode Island on Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.
