Heading into the 2026 season, the UConn Huskies hadn’t lost a home weekend series in their first five years at Elliot Ballpark. On Saturday afternoon, the Huskies (26-22) fell to East Tennessee State University (29-15), 6-1, to drop their second-straight homestand.
Losing their last weekend home series to Big East rival St. John’s two weeks ago, the Huskies were looking to rebound in their return to Storrs against the Bucs but did not make things easy on themselves or starter Cayden Suchy.
The Huskies’
ace got through a clean first inning but ran into some trouble in the second. Buccaneers four-hole hitter Jamie Palmese led off the second with a single but was thrown out trying to steal second. However, the next two batters also reached on a walk and a single. The base hit from Joey Little would have left runners on the corners had it not been for a throwing error from Jackson Marshall.
Cutting off the outlet throw from left center, shortstop Rob Rispoli noticed Little taking a big turn around first and pump faked him back to the bag. Instead of eating the throw and leaving runners on the corners with two outs, Rispoli fired low towards first after a few fakes. Marshall couldn’t adjust to the throw in time and the ball bounced off Little, rolling towards the ETSU dugout and allowing Tyler Fetterman to score from first easily. The error gave the Buccaneers their first run of the day, unearned.
The Bucs also had some loud contact off Suchy. After a mound visit from coach Joshua McDonald in the third inning, Suchy saw his next pitch get barreled off the top of the wall in right center by Tristan Curless, scoring Nate Conner after a double of his own earlier in the inning.
Despite the early damage, Suchy settled in and showed why he is a favorite for Big East Pitcher of the Year. The left-hander delivered his fifth quality start in his last six outings after allowing just two earned runs on seven innings pitched and 104 pitches thrown. With his seven punchouts on the day, the sophomore now sits just two strikeouts away from being the first to 100 in the Big East this season and remains in the top 10 nationally.
“He fights, we just don’t have enough fight in our lineup,” UConn Head Coach Jim Penders said in a postgame interview with the UConn Sports Network. “We don’t fight back when we get hit in the mouth. We don’t come back on teams.”
The only other run against Suchy came in his final inning on a Ian Guanzon triple that trickled under the wall in left center to score Andrew Palmer. The Huskies challenged the safe call at third but the on-field decision was confirmed.
While the Bucs went back-to-back off reliever Paxton Meyers in the top of the eighth, with Henry Ferguson leaving the park first for the second straight day and Curless following up with one of his own for a second extra-base hit, the Huskies had a chance to get it all back in the bottom of the inning.
After a pair of singles from the Huskies’ double-play duo in Rispoli and Evan Menzel to lead off the inning, Rispoli advanced to third when Little dropped a Chris Cancel flyout on the transfer. That came up big when Reid Brosnan, who replaced starter Tadan Bell following the error, sailed a pitch to the backstop, allowing Rispoli to score the Huskies’ first run of the day.
UConn looked like they weren’t done yet. Two more walks from Chase Taylor and Cam Righi brought Marshall up to the plate with the bases loaded.
After extending his on-base streak to 37 contests with a hard single in the fourth and with a chance to live every baseball player’s dream by tying it up with one swing, Marshall fouled a trio of pitches before grounding one softly to third and ending the Huskies’ threat for good.
Outside of the unearned run charged against him for the Little error, Bell was immaculate for the Bucs. In his longest start of the season, the redshirt junior went 7.1 innings of scoreless baseball and didn’t allow a single free pass. While the Huskies picked up six hits off of him, he struck out four UConn batters.
“We didn’t hit a ton of balls hard, certainly not nearly enough, but the ones we did hit they made plays on,” Penders said in the UConn Sports Network interview.
The Bucs tacked on an insurance run in the ninth on a sac fly from Conner.
The Huskies will look to salvage the series and avoid being swept for the first time at Elliot Ballpark on Sunday with Oliver Pudvar on the mound. The redshirt junior hasn’t allowed an earned run in any of his last three starts, all three wins, and hasn’t given up an earned run in 23.1 innings.
“We got an opportunity, we haven’t been swept in this ballpark yet,” Penders said to the UConn Sports Network. “I don’t plan on starting tomorrow and I know the guys don’t either.”
First pitch is scheduled for 11:05 a.m. The game will stream live on UConn+.
