April 6, 2007
Box Score
Brooklyn, NY - Sophomore catcher Chris Drechsel's (Cranford, NJ / Cranford) first career home run broke a 4-4 sixth-inning tie. He added a two-run double in the seventh to help give Wagner (7-15; 3-0 NEC) an 8-5 victory over Long Island (5-16; 0-3 NEC) earlier today at LIU Field.
The Seahawks jumped out to the early 4-0 lead and freshman Bobby Tretola (Union, NJ / Roselle Catholic) cruised through the first four innings, yielding just two base-runners. In the fifth inning, the LIU-bats came to life as they tied the game up.
Freshman Buddy Cipoletti (West Islip, NY / St. John The Baptist) relieved Tretola and after hitting a batter escaped a bases-loaded situation by inducing a fly ball to left field.
Drechsel led off the following inning with a home run to give the Green & White a lead they would not relinquish. In the bottom of the sixth, LIU again loaded the bases but this time it was sophomore Andrew Huebner (Hatfield, PA / North Penn) who shut the door by inducing a weak fly ball to center field to quell the LIU-threat. Freshman Vin Avella (Matawan, NJ / CBA) led off the seventh with his second home run in as many games to make it 6-4 before Drechsel doubled home runs seven and eight.
The Blackbirds would threaten again in the bottom of the seventh, scoring an unearned run while bringing the tying run to the plate with two outs, but Huebner closed out the 8-5 Seahawk-victory with a three-pitch strikeout. Cipoletti picked up his first collegiate win to move to 1-1 while Huebner struck out two over 2.0 innings to earn his first career save.
James Jones (1-2) took the loss for LIU after giving up four runs, two earned, over 2.0 innings. Danny Etkin paced the LIU-offense, going 2-3 with two RBI.
After scoring in the first inning in each of the past two games the Green & White waited until the third to strike. Freshman Damian Csakai (Freehold, NJ / Freehold) led off with a double before senior Joseph DiGeronimo (Hawthorne, NJ / Hawthorne) brought him around with his NEC-best fourth triple of the year. Sophomore Peter Delleani (Manalapan, NJ / CBA) made it 2-0 Wagner when he drove in DiGeronimo with an RBI groundout to shortstop.
In the fifth inning, DiGeronimo ripped his third hit of the game to lead off the inning. Delleani then reached on an error by the shortstop. Avella made the LIU defense pay for the error by blasting a ground-rule double to right-center while plating DiGeronimo. After a groundout, Delleani scored on senior Ed Sudol's (Wallington, NJ / Wallington) ground out to third to make it 4-0.
DiGeronimo went 3-4 with three runs while Drechsel was 2-3 with three RBI to lead the way for Wagner.
The two teams conclude their four-game set with a single game tomorrow at 2 pm.
