Baseball Advances to Championship Sunday

Patchogue, NY| The St. Joseph's University (L.I.) baseball team booked its place in the Skyline Conference Championship game with an 8-4 win over Farmingdale State in Saturday evening's elimination Game 7.

The Golden Eagles will face the fourth-seeded U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in the title game at 12:00 pm on Sunday. SJLI, with a 2-1 record in the double-elimination tournament, must beat 2-0 USMMA twice on Sunday in order to capture the conference championship. 

A win for USMMA in Sunday's noon contest would clinch the title for the Mariners. 

St. Joseph's opened the scoring in the first inning via Paul Gugliuzzo's RBI single through the right side that scored Phil Krpata.

John Lynch doubled SJLI's lead (2-0) later in the inning when his RBI single up the middle brought Krpata home.

Hermes Abreu extended the lead in the top of the third with a sac fly to left field (3-0), bringing home Nick Vicino, who got on with a double down to right-field line.

After Krpata drove in another run in the top of the sixth (4-0), he and Gugliuzzo scored when Ryan Decoursey singled to shortstop to extend SJLI's lead to six runs (6-0).

Farmingdale's three-run sixth briefly cut their deficit in half (6-3), but the Golden Eagles found two more runs in the top of the eighth to go ahead by five (8-3). 

Farmingdale posted a consolation run in the bottom of the eighth (8-4).

Ryan Foran started and struck out two batters in 5.1 innings for St. Joseph's. Dante Morabito fanned five batters in 3.2 innings of relief work.