Seahawks close regular season with 6-3 win over Wentworth

NEWPORT, R.I. - The Salve Regina University baseball team closed their regular season with a 6-3 win over Wentworth Institute of Technology in the regular season finale for both teams Saturday afternoon at Reynolds Field.

Graduate student Tom Glynn (Woodbridge, Conn.), senior Brandon Bursie (Smithfield, R.I.), and freshman Dominic De Sano (Central Falls, R.I.) each drove in runs for the Seahawks (20-19, 14-8), who will travel to Boston on Tuesday for a The Commonwealth Coast Conference (TCCC) Quarterfinal game with the Leopards (22-13, 14-8 TCCC) on Tuesday.

Glynn staked the Seahawks to a 1-0 lead in the first when he plated senior Charles Matarazzo (Montville, N.J.) with a single through the left side. Bursie laced a one-out triple with one out in the third and scored on a sac fly by De Sano in the second to push the lead to 2-0.

The Leopards committed three errors in the third inning, and the Seahawks capitalized by pushing across three more runs to take a 5-0 lead. Glynn sent a dribbler back to the mound with two on and none out, but WIT sophomore starting pitcher Matt Thomas (Mashpee, Mass.) threw the ball wide of first base, allowing senior Alex Melcher (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) to score from second. Junior Nick Politelli (Warwick, R.I.) was on first base on the play and came around to score on a throwing error by senior Jake McManus (Hopkinson, N.H.), making it 4-0. Later in the frame, junior Matt Capone (East Providence, R.I.) plated Glynn with an RBI groundout to McManus.

Wentworth scraped across a single run in the fourth and two more in the fifth, cutting the deficit to 5-3. Senior Ben Danker (Branford, Conn.) drove in the Leopards first run of the afternoon with a single to center in the fourth, and freshman Jon Spitz (Hanover, Mass.) tripled in two more with a shot over Bursie's head in center in the fifth. The Seahawks answered with a run in their half of the fifth when junior SS Conner Flisnik (Marcy, N.Y.) bobbled a grounder off the bat of Bursie, allowing Glynn to score from third and giving SRU a 6-3 lead.

Freshman Devin Flynn (Auburn, Maine) pitched two perfect innings to start the game and improved to 5-1 with the win. Sophomore Dan Kehew (Portsmouth, R.I.) worked the final two innings to earn his third save of the season. Thomas took the loss for the Leopards, allowing four hits and six runs (three earned) in 4.2 innings of work.

"It's nice to reach 20 wins," said Salve Regina head coach Steve Cirella. "You'd like to be a higher seed than we are, but the conference has gotten so much better. When you play 22 league games, you have to be consistent, and that's something we haven't been this season. We go out and play like professionals one day, but the next day we play like we've never seen a baseball. The good teams in this league are consistent, and that's what we need to be in the playoffs."

The Seahawks and Leopards will play their TCCC Quarterfinal at Parsons Field on the campus of Northeastern University Tuesday at 3 p.m.