LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ – The Iona College baseball team used a 12-0 victory in the nightcap of this afternoon's doubleheader to split two games at Rider.
Game One
The Broncs built a 4-0 lead following five innings of play before adding five more runs in the seventh and eighth innings on the way to a 9-3 opening victory.
Jake Barbiere led the third off with an infield single followed by a double to left center from Jake Bender to put runners on second and third. Riley Mihalik drove in the first run of the game with a ground out followed by a RBI sacrifice fly from Kyle Johnson to put Rider up 2-0.
The lead doubled in the fifth Mihalik picking up his second RBI of the day on a single to center field to score Barbiere. Johnson also notched his second RBI by scoring Bender on a RBI single to center.
Iona broke the shutout in the seventh inning as
Lou Matarazzo drove in
Fran Kinsey on a RBI single. In the next at-bat,
Stephen Hansen doubled to left center to score
Sean Breen and cut into the deficit at 4-2 in the middle of the seventh.
The Broncs matched the two runs from the Gaels in the top of the seventh with a pair of runs of their own with Johnson and Brennan McAllister each tallying a RBI. Johnson drove in two more runs as part of three runs in the bottom of the eighth on a double to left field while Joe Simone added a RBI triple.
Trailing 9-2 going into the top of the ninth,
Sean Breen notched a home run to left center on a 3-2 count to score the third run of the game for Iona with one out. However, Jordan Silverman closed out his three innings of relief work by recording the final two outs.
Pete Soporowski went six scoreless innings on the start for Rider with five strikeouts before Silverman tossed the final three frames. Johnson finished with five RBI in the first game of the afternoon.
Breen was joined by
Tyler Bruno and
Brian Picone as the three Gaels to record two hits in the opener in addition to scoring twice.
Game Two
In the nightcap, Iona was able to turn the offensive attack around as the group put together 12 runs to support starting pitching
Schuyler Bates.
The Gaels opened with six runs in the first two innings of the second game as the lineup started with three straight singles in the first. With one out,
Sam Punzi drove in
Sean Scales for the first run followed by Kinsey driving in a run with a sacrifice fly.
Picone started the four-run rally in the fourth with a one out double and scored two batters later on a wild pitch, also moving Scales to second base after the shortstop singled to place Picone on third. Scales scored the second run of the inning on a Breen ground out. Matarazzo and Punzi strung together back-to-back doubles to each plate a run and afford the Gaels a 6-0 advantage.
Iona furthered the lead with a run in each of the fourth and sixth as Matarazzo picked up a RBI single before Punzi notched a RBI in the sixth. The scoring concluded in the final seventh inning with four runs. Scales drove in two of the runs with a double to centerfield while Breen added a RBI double on top of Punzi's final RBI hit to score Bruno.
In addition to scoring offense, the Iona pitching kept the Broncs off the scoreboard with just one hit allowed.
Schuyler Bates logged the first 5.2 innings of work with five strikeouts before handing the ball over to
Kyle Ackley and
Vinny Martin for the last 1.1 innings of relief with Martin notching two strikeouts.
The third and final game of the series is scheduled for Monday at 3 pm following Friday's rain out.
