By Chris Estrada
After losing two out of three games to the Hofstra Pride May 11-13 (a 6-4 win, then losses 5-2 and 3-2), the situation became clear-cut for the Northeastern baseball team. At 1.5 games out of the final Colonial Athletic Association’s (CAA) playoff position, they’d have to win big against the Rams during the weekend and hope for outside help to make the postseason.
“Everyone was pretty calm, no one was panicking really,” junior pitcher and ace Kris Dabrowiecki said. “We knew [at Hofstra] what our objective was and we just wanted to go out there and do what we always do, try to win games.”
Dabrowiecki did all he could to win on Thursday, pitching a complete game and allowing just two runs on eight hits. But Virginia Commonwealth (VCU) starter Cody Eppley (six innings, one run, four hits, nine strikeouts) and a pair of relievers shackled the potent Husky offense long enough to record a 2-1 victory at Friedman Diamond in Brookline.
Combined with a 5-1 Georgia State win against Towson on Friday, the loss eliminated Northeastern from playoff contention.
“I felt pretty good out there,” Dabrowiecki said. “I was hitting my spots and my slider and changeup were working pretty well. … I just wanted to keep the team in the game. I felt good, just disappointed, that’s all.”
The two teams finished the series on a misty, cloudy Saturday at Friedman. The seven-inning first game featured a sparkling showing from sophomore pitcher Jeff Thomson, who recorded a two-hit shutout of the Rams, 4-0, on Senior Day.
Northeastern jumped to a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the first on a sacrifice grounder from junior first baseman Josh Porter and a two-run single up the middle from freshman second baseman Dave Fisher. Thomson ran the show from there, allowing just two base hits (one in the third, the other in the seventh). Senior third baseman Garrett Chin knocked in the final NU run with a sacrifice fly to left field in the sixth.
In the second game, the Huskies charged back from a 4-1 deficit to score one run each in the seventh, eighth and ninth to force the game into extra innings. Senior designated hitter Dan Milano started the rally with a RBI single in the seventh and finished it with a game-tying home run off the scoreboard, his 13th of the year, to send the game into the 10th.
“The guys from the bench had been bothering me to get another one out,” Milano said. “In the three years previously, I’ve had three home runs as a freshman, six as a sophomore and nine as a junior, and they wanted me to get one more and get out of that streak I had going. It was a good feeling to get one in my last at bat. I was hoping it wasn’t gonna be my last at-bat, but it just didn’t work out that way.”
Unfortunately, the Husky heroics wouldn’t last in the 10th. After VCU’s Nathan Furry hit a sacrifice fly to give his team the lead in their half of the inning, Northeastern went down 1-2-3 to three strikeouts, giving the Rams a 5-4 win.
“It shows how close we are to a team like this,” McPhee said after Thursday’s game. “Top of the conference team and we were right there with ’em, so it’s not like we don’t have the talent to play teams like this.”
While missing the post-season for the first time since 1992, the 2007 Huskies have plenty of good things to look back at.
On offense, the team batting average jumped to .290, seventeen points ahead of their 2006 mark. In addition, the team hit five more home runs (53), and had 11 more RBI (252). The young pitching corps also played well, cutting their walks from 203 in 2006 to 140 in 2007.
“I was looking at Saturday’s game programs and some of the improvements statistically were really impressive to me,” Milano said. “It’s amazing we didn’t have a better year than we did. … Overall, I thought it was a rebuilding year, considering we lost those guys in the draft. But I also think it was a really good rebuilding year.”
Sophomore left fielder Mike Tamsin was named to the All-CAA second team for the second consecutive season at the 2007 CAA Awards Banquet Tuesday night. Freshman pitcher Ryan Quigley was selected to the CAA All-Rookie team.
Tamsin, who will have to help shoulder the load left behind by seniors Milano, Garrett Chin and Tristan Besse, said the most valuable lesson this group of Huskies learned was experience in dealing with these rough patches.
“We played real well, then hit a cold streak,” Tamsin said. “Last year, we never had a hiccup like we did this year. [Last year], we swept a lot of series, won two of three games thanks to the work horses we had. A lot of people now know this and have been through it, and know how to react better. We gained a lot of good experience this year and it’s gonna groom us for next year.”
