Baseball Drops Skyline Tourney Game to Old Westbury, 4-1

Courtesy of Old Westbury Sports Information

OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. - The top-seeded SUNY College at Old Westbury baseball team opened Skyline Conference Championship Tournament play Friday afternoon with a 4-1 victory over No. 4 St. Joseph's (L.I.) Golden Eagles from Jackie Robinson Athletic Complex.  The Panthers position themselves one win away from advancing to its fifth consecutive conference championship game and will take on No. 3 Farmingdale State on Saturday at 10 a.m. in Old Westbury.  

The Panthers batted around to break through in the second inning with a trio of unearned runs off Golden Eagles' starter Steve Szobesky.  Third baseman Joseph Calabrese made a pair of costly errors to allow two runs to cross the plate and Kevin Licul capped the scoring with an RBI single for a three-run Panther lead.

Jonathan Pagan doubled to lead off the fifth inning before Licul's single scored Old Westbury's fourth run of the game. 

Dan Diblasi drilled a two-out double past third baseman John Angelino to score Anthony Bonilla for an unearned Golden Eagle run in the sixth inning.

Panther starter Arismendy Nunez (6-2) put forth nine innings of greatness on the mound to record his sixth win of the season.  Nunez issued 11 strikeouts with zero walks and allowed an unearned run on three hits to notch his fourth complete game outing of the season.  Nunez allowed a single to leadoff the game and then proceeded to retire the next 16 batters.  Following the lone Golden Eagle run, Nunez retired the next 10 batters to close out the game. 

Licul banged out a pair of RBI singles and finished the game 3-for-3 at the plate to register his ninth multi-hit game of the season. 

Szobesky (3-4) took the Golden Eagles' loss after surrendering four runs (one earned) on five hits and two walks while striking out six.