WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. (May 25, 2024) – Each of the last four times it has been contested, the Northeast Conference Baseball Championship has gone the distance. Why should the 2024 edition be any different?
 
After a roller coaster first half of the game, miscues caught up with the top-seeded Sacred Heart University baseball team in the seventh inning on Saturday afternoon. Second-seeded LIU plated five runs to break a 5-5 tie and then held on in the final innings to take a 10-7 victory and push the tournament to its limit.
 
SHU (35-22) and LIU (31-23) will meet again at noon on Sunday at Heritage Financial Park. The winner will put the trophy on their bus and drive away with the NEC's automatic bid to the NCAA Championship as well.
 
Saturday's affair was a 3-hour, 36-minute odyssey which featured 17 runs, 23 hits and 23 men left on base as well. Nine pitchers combined to throw 360 pitches, in one of those games where whichever side came up short was going to feel it had opportunities to win the contest.
 
LIU – which had scored seven in the eighth to rally past Merrimack, 11-9, earlier on Saturday – built a 5-1 lead through three, before Sacred Heart answered with two in the fourth and one apiece in the fifth and sixth to get things level at 5-5 with three innings to play. Jarod Wade and Benjamin Fierenzi had early RBI singles for the Sharks, while Dante D'Amore (Southington, Conn.) kickstarted the SHU comeback effort with a solo home run to left field, his team-leading 11^th of the season. He would add an RBI single later, while Alex Ungar (Ronkonkoma, N.Y.) contributed a run-scoring double.
 
The game went to the seventh tied and, at the time, it looked as if LIU might be made the rue its missed chances. The Sharks left the bases loaded in the third and the fifth and left runners at the corners in the sixth, as SHU pitched danced in and out of trouble through the middle of the game. In all, LIU left 15 men on base in the afternoon.
 
Ultimately though, the game did not stay tied long. Unfortunately, the Pios did not make LIU work all that hard to open up a lead, as the Sharks struck for five runs on just two hits in the top of the seventh. The inning started innocently enough, with a ground ball to second, but John Greene's (Naugatuck, Conn.) throw pulled D'Amore off the bag for an error. Wade struck out on a foul bunt with two strikes, but then the wheels fell off for Sacred Heart.
 
Switch pitcher PJ Rogan (Wildwood, N.J.) issued back-to-back walks to load the bases with one away, at which point head coach Pat Egan turned things over to right-hander David Aufiero (Glen Head, N.Y.). Aufiero got Jake Mastillo on a shallow fly ball to right, but then walked Carlton Harper on seven pitches to force home the go-ahead run. A wild pitch chased home the second run and then JC Navarro knocked a single to center field to score the third.
 
Left-hander Jonathan Peterson (Florham Park, N.J.) took over on the mound and surrendered an RBI single to right to Jack Power and threw another run-scoring wild pitch before recording the third out.
 
Suddenly chasing five runs with only nine outs to work with, SHU left two in scoring position in the seventh and then briefly made things interesting in the eighth. Back-to-back singles up the middle from Greene and Michael Simonelli (Milford, Conn.) opened the frame and then Greene scored from first when Gavin Donohue (Melrose, Mass.) bounced into a fielder's choice. A single up the middle from Zack Kovalchik (Archbald, Pa.) put runners at the corners with one away and forced LIU to bring right-hander Justin DeCastro in from the bullpen, with the tying run now in the on-deck circle.
 
Said tying run would get no further though. The Pios would pick up a second run in the inning, to cut the gap to 10-7, but it came at huge cost, as Donohue came home to score while Kovalchik was picked off first base. Now with two outs and nobody on, DeCastro got a flyout to finish off the threat. He would roll up a game-ending double play to erase a one-out walk in the ninth and record his first save of the season.
 
Sacred Heart has played in three previous winner-take-all final games at the NEC Championship and is 1-2 in such contests, as the Pios won the 2015 title, but finished as runner up in 2013 and 2010. On all three occasions, the opposition forced the final game after SHU headed into the final round undefeated.