MT. PLEASANT, S.C. – In their first game of the 2023 CAA tournament, the #3 seed Northeastern Huskies (42-12) took down the #6 seed William & Mary Tribe (32-24) by a score of 6-0 on Wednesday afternoon at Patriots Point.
A combined one-hitter from starting pitcher
Aiven Cabral (W, 9-3) and reliever
Jake Gigliotti (SV, 2) kept William & Mary off the scoreboard, while the Husky offense, powered by
Mike Sirota (3-for-5, 2 RBI), put up six runs on 11 hits in the contest.
- The Huskies struck first in the bottom of the second inning – leadoff man Alex Lane reached after a hit-by-pitch, Cam Maldonado worked a full-count walk, and Harrison Feinberg singled up the middle to load the bags for Luke Beckstein with no outs.
- Beckstein hit a fly ball to left center field, scoring Lane from third for the first run of the game.
- With two outs, Spenser Smith sent a fastball back up the middle of the infield, scoring Cam Maldonado from second base to extend the lead to 2-0.
- The Huskies got a big shutdown inning in the top of the third with a line-out double play to Cam Maldonado, throwing out the sac-fly attempt at home to end the inning.
- Northeastern added another two-out RBI in the bottom of the fourth when Luke Beckstein hit a single to begin the inning, and advanced to third on two ground-outs.
- As the batting order flipped, Mike Sirota stepped into the batters box and hit a single off of the pitcher's mitt to score Beckstein for the 3-0 lead.
- Starting pitcher Aiven Cabral worked 5.1 innings of one-hit, no-run baseball on just 62 pitches. He walked two runners in the contest and struck out three batters, leaving the game with a 3-0 lead.
- The Huskies got a big inning in the sixth with two outs – after Spenser Smith reached on an error, the Huskies got four straight hits from Sirota, Tyler MacGregor, Danny Crossen, and Alex Lane to score three runs, leading 6-0.
- Gigliotti finished his day with 3.2 innings pitched for his second save of the season – he allowed no hits, struck out three, and walked two.
- It's just the fourth one-hitter in CAA Tournament history, and the first once since the 2007 tournament.
- It's the second straight victory for the Huskies over the Tribe in the first round of the tournament – the Huskies edged out a 3-2 win in the 2022 opening round as the five seed, against the fourth-seeded Tribe.
- Northeastern had eight two-out hits in the contest, with five of them driving in runs.
The win sets up a round two contest against #2 Elon at 7 p.m. on Thursday evening. It'll be the first CAA Tournament match up between the two teams since 2019, when the Phoenix eliminated the Huskies in the loser's bracket finals. The game will be broadcast on FloBaseball and WRBB 104.9 FM.
#HowlinHuskies
