NEWBURGH, N.Y. – The Purchase College baseball team returned to its winning ways with a Skyline Conference doubleheader sweep at Mount Saint Mary College on Saturday. Purchase battled to an 8-6 victory in the opener before completing the sweep with an 11-2 win in game two.
With the wins, the Panthers moved to 7-11 on the season, while the host Knights dropped to 2-5 overall. Both teams return to action tomorrow—this time on the Purchase diamond starting at 3 p.m.
Game One: Purchase 8, MSMC 6
Purchase plated a pair of runs in the top of the first to take an early 2-0 lead. Junior shortstop
James Shea (Brooklyn, NY) led off with a walk and came around to score on a
James May (JR/Floral Park, NY) RBI single to right field. A sacrifice fly from junior third baseman
Jemal Betances (Bronx, NY) pushed senior second baseman
Dylan Flynn (Smithtown, NY) across home plate for PC's second tally.
The Panthers added another run in the fourth on an
Isaac Reyes (FR/East Islaip, NY) single to left field. Mount St. Mary answered back with a run in the bottom half of the inning before Purchase broke open the scoring with a four-run rally in the sixth. The visitors later used a RBI single from junior catcher
Max Vera (Bethpage, NY) to hold an 8-2 lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning.
Purchase halted a seventh-inning rally, escaping with the two-run lead that secured the win. The Mount put up four runs on three hits and a wild pitch in the final stretch. With two outs on the board and a runner at first, Purchase senior righthander
Michael Laskowski (Floral Park, NY) entered the game and put out the fire after forcing a groundout to shortstop. The veteran pitcher earned his second save of the season for the performance.
Senior starter
Cody Hennequin (Milford, CT) (1-3) picked up his first win of the season, working five innings of four-hit, two-run ball with five strikeouts.
Game Two: Purchase 11, MSMC 2
After giving up a run in the second inning, Purchase drove in a trio of scores in the top of the third. Scarry reached with a hit by pitch to lead off the inning. He advanced to second on a Shea single, advanced to third on a wild pitch, and eventually scored on a Flynn RBI single up the middle. A
Josh Ferro 2-RBI double to right field sent Shea and Flynn home, giving the Panthers their first lead (3-1) of the game.
Purchase held the advantage over MSMC for the remainder of the game, tacking on another 10 runs over the next six innings.
Flynn led the Panther offense, slugging .750 with three hits in four trips to the plate, four runs and one RBI. Purchase also saw RBI performances from
Matthew Mulligan (2-for-5, 2RBI),
Matthew Nilsen (1-for-4, 2RBI), May (1-for-4, 2RBI), Ferro (1-for-5, 2RBI) and Scarry (1-for-3, 1RBI).
Alex Doskoez (Eastport, NY) (2-1) notched the win with five strikeouts against 36 batters. The junior hurler tossed a complete game and held the Knights to just two runs (1 ER).
