[ad_1]
The teams will meet again at 7 p.m. Monday, with the winner advancing to a super regional against No. 2 seed Stanford or Texas State. Maryland is seeking its first super regional appearance since 2015.
Maryland’s Kevin Keister singled with one out in the 11th to end the night for Connecticut reliever Devin Kirby, who allowed two runs in a season-high 4⅓ innings. Jack Sullivan promptly allowed a first-pitch single to Luke Shliger and plunked Chris Alleyne. Lorusso then singled off the right field wall to win it.
Maryland’s Andrew Johnson pitched a scoreless 11th for the win.
It was the second consecutive night the Terps (48-13) met the Huskies (48-14), and Connecticut’s 10-5 triumph Saturday had relegated Maryland to the losers’ bracket. It meant the Terps would have to win three in a row to move on to the second weekend of the tournament, while Connecticut needed just one win in two tries.
Maryland already had squandered a four-run lead when Alleyne led off the seventh with a double. Two batters later, Matt Shaw sharply hit one just within the reach of second baseman David Smith, who skittered a throw to first.
Alleyne, the Big Ten player of the year, didn’t stop at third. He scampered home as first baseman Ben Huber’s throw went to the backstop and allowed Shaw to move up a base. Shaw made it 6-4 two batters later when Maxwell Costes roped a single to right.
Nick Robinson pitched five scoreless innings for Maryland. Vaughn used four relievers to cover the sixth, seventh and part of the eighth. But Smith’s two-out RBI triple to right forced Vaughn’s hand; he called on Ryan Ramsey, who threw 81 pitches in Friday’s defeat of Long Island, to finish things out.
Ramsey’s wild pitch scored Smith to tie it, but Maryland’s ace got the next seven outs without incident.
In the first game of the day, Maryland uncorked a six-run rally with two outs in the eighth to surge past Wake Forest, 10-5.
The Terps hit five home runs — including Bobby Zmarzlak’s tying blast onto the roof of the ancient Varsity Team House beyond the left field fence in the eighth and Alleyne’s two-run shot three batters later off Gabe Golub — to eliminate the Demon Deacons (41-19-1).
Reliever David Falco Jr. pitched a season-high 3⅓ innings and struck out seven in his scoreless stint. He entered with Maryland down 5-2.
“I’m never worried when we’re down — especially a three-run lead like that,” Falco said. “One inning is all it takes. We saw it today. I’m on the bench looking at the score, and I have zero worries about our team’s ability to hit and score runs.”
Pitching was the concern heading into the nightcap, especially because the Terps already had used their three usual weekend starters after getting bumped into the losers’ bracket. That meant turning to Robinson, a Rhode Island transfer whose longest outing of the year was 2⅔ innings and who sported a 7.61 ERA while largely working out of the bullpen.
The right-hander was unfazed, retiring the Huskies in order in the first and setting down 10 of the first 11 he faced. He worked into and out of two-on jams in the fourth and the fifth, escaping the latter with a flyout and a grounder to end his night.
Robinson hadn’t thrown more than 57 pitches in a game this season, but he used all the oomph and guile he could muster to navigate his 85-pitch outing.
He handed the bullpen a 4-0 lead featuring Troy Schreffler Jr.’s two-run homer in the first and a Lorusso solo blast in the fifth. But three relievers combined to give up four runs on two hits, throwing a mere 16 strikes on 40 pitches in the sixth as the Huskies tied it heading into the late innings.
[ad_2]
Source link
