TYSONS, Va. — The Catholic baseball team kicked off a weekend series against Susquehanna on Saturday afternoon at Capital One Park. After falling behind by six runs late in the game, the River Hawks rallied with eight runs in the final two innings, six of which came in the ninth, to storm back and beat the Cardinals, 9-7.
Runs were hard to come by through the first six innings of the game as both
Roman Tozzi and Evan Applegate were mowing down the opposing teams. Susquehanna pushed across the first run of the game in the top of the fifth inning on an RBI single Christian Buiso to bring in Tyler Hmielewski to make it a 1-0 game.
Tozzi had to work out of a second and third one out game in the top of the seventh to try and keep the deficit at one for the Cardinals. Tozzi was able to bare down and record a strikeout and induced a fly out to right field to escape the inning and keep it a 1-0.
The Cardinals put together a big inning at the plate in the bottom of the seventh which was started off by an RBI double from
Joe Marini. With runners on first and second,
Zach Burton ripped a double down the left field line to bring in
Jack Bateman and tie the game up at one. Two batters later,
Sammy Burman punched a single into left field to plate
Matthew Fisher and Burton to give Catholic its first lead of the day.
Dante Pozzi put the final exclamation point on the inning with a grand slam over the fence in left field to extend the Catholic lead to six. It was Pozzi's third home run of the season and the Cardinals brought in seven runs on six hits in the inning.
After scoring two in the top of the eighth, the River Hawks needed four runs to try to keep the game alive in the top of the ninth inning. That came to fruition for Susquehanna as they brought in six runs on seven singles to take the lead back 9-7. The Cardinals did bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth after a
Mitchel Johnson walk but were unable to move any runners around and fell by two runs to the River Hawks in the first game of the series.
Inside the Box Score
- The grand slam in the seventh inning took Dante Pozzi to over 100 RBI in his collegiate career with his total now sitting at 101. He overtook the season lead for Catholic in RBI with 29 and now has 22 over his last 13 games played.
- Marini notched two doubles on the afternoon and reached the 100 career hits milestone on his first double in the game. The senior holds a .342 average for his career and now has 33 extra-base hits.
- Tozzi put together his strongest start of the season, pitching a season-high seven innings while allowing just one unearned run and striking out four. He now holds a 3.92 ERA on the season over 41.1 innings pitched with 32 punch outs.
The Cardinals matchup with the River Hawks in a doubleheader tomorrow, April 13 once again at Capital One Park. Catholic will have senior day festivities prior to game one which is slated to start at 12 pm.
