Lions Win ECAC South Championship
Matt Wolczko hit a go-ahead three run triple in the bottom of the fifth to vault the Penn State Behrend baseball team to a 7-3 victory over Gallaudet in the Eastern College Athletic Conference Division III South Championship on Sunday afternoon at the Behrend Diamond.
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Pile Up Video
ERIE, Pa. – Matt Wolczko (Apollo, PA/Kiski) hit a go-ahead three run triple in the bottom of the fifth to vault the Penn State Behrend baseball team to a 7-3 victory over Gallaudet in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Division III South Tournament Championship on Sunday afternoon at the Behrend Diamond.
After the Bison took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, Lions starting pitcher Dante DeSantis (DuBois, PA/Dubois Central Catholic) retired 16 consecutive batters to keep Gallaudet at bay.
Trailing by two in the top of the fifth, Ryan Finnegan (Fombell, PA/Riverside) led off the inning with a walk. After Brandon Bergstrom reached on an error, Taylor Overby (Nazareth, PA/Bethlehem Catholic) singled to load things up.
That's when Wolczko came through with one of the biggest hits of the year for Behrend.
The sophomore cleared the bases with a triple to right, giving the Lions a 3-2 lead. He then came home on Brian Bohman's (Erie, PA/McDowell) sacrifice fly which made it a 4-2 ballgame. Alex Margraf (Erie, PA/McDowell) capped off the inning with an RBI single, and the Lions led 5-2 after five.
The Bison (27-18) crawled closer in the seventh when Chris Guinn singled home Justin Strong to make it a 5-3 contest. It turned out, however, to be the final Gallaudet run of 2014.
In the eighth, Bergstrom singled home Nathan Junk (Cabot, PA/Knoch) and Overby then squeezed in Bergstrom to make it a 7-3 ballgame.
Connor Semple (Washington, PA/McGuffey), who was spectacular in three shutout innings of relief, threw a scoreless ninth to preserve the victory for Behrend. The junior tallied his second save of the season in the process.
DeSantis made his final start in a Lions uniform a memorable one, as the senior earned his ninth win of the year, pitching six solid innings.
John Hlavinka (Venetia, PA/Peters Township) and Bergstrom each had two hits for Behrend and the duo combined for three runs scored.
Wolczko, who in addition to his go-ahead triple, gunned down Bison baserunner Justin Strong at home as he was attempting to score from third in the seventh, was named Most Outstanding Player of the ECAC Tournament.
The Lions finished with a 30-14 record in 2014, and Sunday's win marks the fourth ECAC Tournament championship in program history.