BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (April 7, 2024) – The Sacred Heart University baseball team had not faced much adversity from the Northeast Conference portion of its schedule so far in 2024. Saturday afternoon provided the season's first real gut punch, when the team surrendered a three-run ninth-inning lead and suffered a 10-8 loss. Sunday afternoon's series finale against Coppin State at Veterans Memorial Park was not going in a great direction either.
 
Then, the Pioneers got up off the mat and threw a haymaker of their own.
 
Dante D'Amore (Southington, Conn.) and Tim McGuire (Portsmouth, R.I.) collaborated to produce a two-run ninth-inning rally and force extra innings.
 
Zack Kovalchik (Archbald, Pa.) made sure it was just one extra inning, singular rather than plural.
 
The junior center fielder unloaded on the third pitch of the bottom of the 10^th inning for a no-doubt, walk-off home run and a 9-8 (10 inn.) Sacred Heart victory. It was Kovalchik's third home run of the weekend and his first collegiate walk-off hit.
 
The game itself was something of an odyssey. The 10 innings featured 397 pitches (but just 214 strikes), 25 strikeouts, 19 hits, 19 walks as well, 17 runs, 11 wild pitches, 10 pitchers, five stolen bases, three home runs, three hit batters, and also a run-scoring balk, just for good measure. It lasted 3 hours and 44 minutes. Were there a pear tree at Veterans Memorial Park, it likely would have had a partridge in it on Sunday afternoon.
 
SHU (15-13, 12-3 NEC) briefly had a 6-5 lead in the middle innings, but then surrendered two in an ugly and lackadaisical top of the fifth inning to fall behind, 7-6. The frame saw three wild pitches, which allowed Coppin State to score two runs with just a pair of singles. It also featured a moment where a baserunner got a walking lead off first base, broke with the pitcher still set, stole second anyway, and then got to stand there while the Pioneer middle infield argued about it with the umpire. The inning, and the latter play in particular, prompted Sacred Heart head coach Pat Egan to let his team hear ALL about it – all-caps very much intended – when they arrived back in the third-base dugout following the third out.
 
The tongue lashing may have been the kick in the pants the Pios needed to lock in for the rest of the afternoon.
 
Coppin State (6-18, 5-10 NEC) would add one more in the top of the eighth, but otherwise the SHU pitching and defense held strong through the remainder of the game, which allowed the offense to get up to its late-inning theatrics.
 
Trailing by a pair, D'Amore led off the last of the ninth, elevated the first pitch towards center field, got it up into the jet stream and saw it carry beyond the center field fence for his second home run of the game, a solo shot to pull SHU within a run. It was his first career multiple-homer game.
 
McGuire followed with a five-pitch walk and then things got weird on the mound for left-hander Clay Thompson. The southpaw would strike out the next two batters, but in the process also uncorked a pair of wild pitches to move McGuire around to third. Thompson would then walk Gavin Donohue (Melrose, Mass.) on four straight pitches, the last of which went to the backstop as well and allowed McGuire to scamper home from third with the tying run.
 
Right-hander Jake McDowell (Brookfield, Conn.) used a strikeout and a popup to work around a one-out double in the top of the 10^th, and then Kovalchik decided enough was enough. He got a 1-1 pitch over the heart of the plate and did not miss. The SHU dugout went bananas from the moment the ball hit the bat, Egan put all of his 6-foot-8 frame into a fist pump in the third-base coaching box when the ball cleared the fence, and a sea of red and white awaited Kovalchik when he returned home as a conquering hero. The Pios had their fifth straight NEC series win to open the season and remained in first place, one game in front of Wagner.
 
"I knew I was the winning run and I was just trying to get on base," said Kovalchik after the game. "He left the pitch over the plate and I just put a good swing on it."
 
The rally and the walk-off made a winner out of McDowell (1-1), who turned in two innings of scoreless, one-hit relief with one walk and three strikeouts. Right-hander John Neeld (1-3) had been the beneficiary of Coppin State's rally on Saturday, but was on the other side on Sunday. He recorded the final out of the ninth after Thompson squandered the lead, but then served up the game-ending homer to Kovalchik.
 
SHU will keep it in southern Connecticut all next week, as they travel to Quinnipiac for a non-conference tilt on Tuesday and return home to host Le Moyne in a three-game NEC series on April 12-14 at Veterans Memorial Park.