The Mary Washington baseball team took down No. 7 Salisbury in the Coast-to-Coast Conference semifinal matchup before falling to No. 10 Christopher Newport in Newport News, Va. on Friday afternoon.
C2C Semifinal - UMW wins - 10-5
In a win-or-go-home game, the Eagles were certainly up to the challenge after finishing the Sea Gulls with a six-run eighth inning to defeat Salisbury, 10-5.
The Eagles scored the first three runs in the third when Ryan Schwarz singled home George Rizzo, while Ty Lowe doubled a pair of runs home. The Sea Gulls scored a run in the bottom half, but then the Eagles scored another in the fourth to extend their lead, 4-1, as Rizzo singled home Tommy Martinez.
The Sea Gulls took the lead, 5-4, with a four-run fifth, but UMW completed the comeback with a six-run eighth.
Martinez got the scoring started with an RBI double that plated Lowe to tie the game at five before Burke Steifman's RBI single gave the Eagles a 6-5. George Rizzo added a run with a sac fly that scored Martinez. Then Schwarz doubled home Jacob Christenbury and Steifman to extend the lead, 9-5. And finally, Noah Roots capped the inning off with an RBI single.
Gavin Riley fared well in his five innings of work, yielding four earned runs (five total) in five innings, while striking out three. Connor Hassan, meanwhile, stole the show on the mound with four shutout innings out of the bullpen and struck out four to move to 2-2 on the season.
C2C Final - UMW falls - 16-0
With the victory, the Eagles advanced to the C2C Championship Game for the second-straight year, this time facing No. 10 CNU. The Eagles would fall 16-0 to the Captains.
Alex Purgason, Oliver Martin, Roots and Martinez all collected base hits for the Eagles in the loss.
The Eagles head into selection Monday with a 27-13 record and four Top 25 victories over current members of the D3Baseball Poll. The Eagles took down No. 5 Salisbury in March before doing it again on Friday, No. 12 Penn State-Harrisburg, and No. 21 Randolph-Macon. The Eagles took down then-No. 17 Shenandoah on the road in April as well.
The Eagles will find out if their season continues on Monday afternoon when the NCAA Selection Show airs on NCAA.com at Noon.