The Boston College baseball team bounced back after a heartbreaking loss in their NCAA Regional opener on Friday by knocking off Long Island 8-4 on Saturday afternoon to keep their season alive. The Eagles jumped out to a big lead early on and cruised for most of the game before Long Island gave them a bit of a scare in the eighth inning to make things a bit closer. Things never got too nervous for BC, however, and the Eagles will get to play at least one more game on Sunday as a result.
BC got on
the board first thanks to a first inning single from Nick Wang that gave them a lead they would never relinquish. They pushed across three more in both the second and fourth inning to make it a 7-0 game before Jack Toomey added the exclamation point in the fifth his second home run in as many days to give BC an eight run lead. Long Island responded with a home run of their own in the bottom of the fifth and added a three-run shot in the eighth to make it an 8-4 game. They put two more runners on base with just one out to continue threatening their comeback, but Kyle Kipp came in and struck out two consecutive batters to escape any further danger as the 8-4 score would hold up as the final.
Tyler Mudd pitched a brilliant game for BC, going 7.1 innings and striking out 10 in the process, good for a new career high. He was really only ever punished by the long ball, as he allowed just four hits over the course of his longest outing of the season. Kyle Kipp got the final five outs for the save, striking out three batters and giving up just one hit to slam the door shut.
At the plate, a number of different players had big days for the Eagles. Carter Hendrickson hit a two run home run as part of the teams big second inning, Ty Mainolfi had a two-run single in the fourth, Julio Solier continued his strong regional with two more hits and an RBI, Toomey hit his solo shot and Kyle Wolff reached base three times as BC had 10 hits and four walks to go against just four strikeouts.
After a tough loss to Liberty on Friday afternoon, this was a great bounce back performance from BC to keep their season alive for at least another day. They still have a long way to go if they want to come out of this regional, as it will take two wins on Sunday and a win on Monday to do so, but this was a good first step. With two strong starting pitching performances over the last two days, BC will enter Sunday with a pretty fresh bullpen that they’ll definitely need to lean on if they manage to keep winning. They’ll be back out there tomorrow at noon when they take on the loser of tonight’s game between Liberty and Georiga.
