Eagles Drop ECAC Tournament Game to Baruch

Patchogue, N.Y. – Baruch College (22-19) defeated St. Joseph's College (21-22) in the opening quarterfinal round of the 2012 ECAC Division III Metro baseball Championship tournament by a score of 6-4 and will advance to play FDU-Florham on Saturday afternoon in the semifinals.

The Golden Eagles opened up the scoring in the bottom of the second on a RBI single by Mike Alisio, scoring James Carey, who had earlier reached on a base hit.

Baruch's offense exploded in the third inning, putting up five runs on a two-run single by Alvin Mata, RBI doubles by Thomas Daly and Yancy Tavares, and a run scoring groundout by Justin Torres.

Rich Pecoraro hit a mammoth homerun to right in the bottom of the seventh inning to bring the Eagles back to within two runs.

Baruch tacked on a run in the eighth as Tavares led off the eighth with a double down the left field line, then stole third before getting driven home on a fielder's choice groundout by Torres.

The home team attempted some ninth inning heroics by scoring one run on a double by Charles Zilnicki to cut the lead to two, but could not complete the comeback despite bringing the tying run to the plate.

Jason Dierkes took the loss as he pitched eight innings for St. Joseph's allowing six earned runs.  Baruch's Jesus Izarra went the full nine innings for the win, improving his record to 8-1.

While St. Joseph's concludes their season with the loss, Baruch now advances to play #2 seed FDU-Florham (22-18) on Saturday at 4:00 p.m. in the semifinal round.  The winner of the #4 Richard Stockton (20-17) and #5 Mount Saint Mary (21-17) match-up will play top-seed and tournament host Stevens (23-17) in the 1:00 p.m. game on Saturday.  The winners of the semifinal games will play for the tournament championship on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at Stevens.