By Sam Wood, News Correspondent

The baseball team ended its season after falling to both the Georgia State Panthers and the Delaware Blue Hens last week during the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) tournament. It was the team’s first appearance in the playoffs since 2006.
The loss brings the team’s final record to 28-25 overall and 13-11 in the CAA. According to the CAA coaches preseason poll, the Huskies were expected to finish 10th in the CAA, but far exceeded that with their fifth-place final standing.
The team then traveled to Wilmington, N.C., to take on the second-seeded Georgia State Panthers in the first round of double-elimination play May 20. The Huskies struggled early, committing three errors with two resulting in runs. Despite taking the late lead in the top of the eighth, they were overpowered by the Panthers who ended the game with a score of 6-5 on a walk-off single.
The following day, Northeastern was dropped down to the loser’s bracket to face the sixth-seeded Delaware Blue Hens. NU fell early as the Blue Hens jumped to a 3-0 lead. In the bottom of the fifth, the Huskies committed four errors and allowed three runs, increasing Delaware’s lead to 6-2. Despite a home run by senior second baseman James Donaldson and hits by senior third baseman Mike Tamsin and sophomore infielder Ryan Maguire in the seventh, the Huskies ended their season with a 9-5 loss.
‘Reaching the conference tournament was one of our goals at the beginning of the year so it was great to accomplish that,’ freshman outfielder Matt Miller said. ‘We played great at the end of the season to get our way into the tournament but obviously we were a little disappointed with the way we performed. But just getting in was a positive.’
Though the Huskies went out earlier than they hoped, the team set 15 personal and school records, including Tamsin’s records for career hits (271) and single-season hits (74), as well as senior catcher Frank Pesanello’s record for career home runs (42).
In a banquet before the tournament, senior pitcher Trevor Smith was named All-CAA second team relief pitcher, and Miller was honored as All-CAA Rookie. Later that week, Donaldson was named to the New England Intercollegiate Baseball Association All-New England second team.
‘It kind of just goes with playing with the team, playing with the guys,’ Smith said. ‘There’s no way I could get that award without the guys behind me playing defense. I got it as a reliever and you don’t get a win unless your team comes back and gets ahead in the game.’
As this season comes to a close, the team says goodbye to their nine departing seniors and look forward to expectations for the future.
‘Every year, everybody wants to improve. Hopefully we’ll get back in the tournament and hopefully we’ll do a little more than we did this year,’ Miller said.