Little Falls, NJ – Sophomore leftfielder Rob Clark lined a single to right-center with two out in the bottom of the ninth to cap a four-run rally as Montclair State swept a New JerseyAthletic Conference doubleheader with an 8-7 victory over RichardStockton at Yogi Berra Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Senior righthander
JAY COOK tossed a complete-game five-hitter in the opener as the Red Hawks (20-13-2) won 7-3, upping their conference mark to12-5. Chris Crescenzi and Joe Sacerdote each homered in the second game for Richard Stockton, which fell to 18-19 overalland finished their league slate at 6-12.
Sacerdote's solo home run in the eighth inning gave Richard Stockton a 7-2 lead, but Montclair State clawed back with two runs in the eighth as
MICHAEL NUNES scored on a wild pitch and RobBowness collected an RBI single against Amit Shah,who gutted his way through the first eight innings.
In the ninth,
LOU POLITAN led off with a double and
SCOTT EVANGELIST followed with one of his own to cut the lead to 7-5 and ending Shah's day. MarcDeCastro then lined a single and took second on the throw putting the tying runs in scoring position. Unlike Friday'scontest when MSU struggled with runners in scoring position, this time Montclair came through as
KEVIN CUOZZI doubled to left center tying the game at 7-7.
Nunes would sacrifice Cuozzi to third for the first out and the Red Hawks nearly won the game as
DANNY RODRIGUEZ lined a ball to short left that Stockton's Chris Herman made a diving catch on for the second out. Clark then took the count full before driving a pitch to left center field for the winning run.
The rally made a winner out of reliever
MARTY CABALAR, who improved to 2-0. Cabalar came on in the ninth with runners and first and second with one out and fanned the next two batters to end the threat. Reliever Joe Fisher took the loss to fall to 0-2.
Mike Roman had two hits and three RBI, including a two-run single in the sixth. DeCastro and Cuozzi each had two hits for Montclair State while Sacerdote, Brian Reagle had two hits apiece for the Ospreys.
In the opener, Cook struck out eight and scattered five hits and gave up three unearned runs as he improved to 4-2 on the season. The righthander did not walka batter as he allowed one hit through the first seven innings.Stockton would get back-to-back singles in the eighth and an error kept the inning going allowing Crescenzi to double home three runs cutting the MSU lead to 7-3. In the ninth Cook allowed the firsttwo base runners to reach before retiring the next three batters to end the game.
Montclair jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first on an RBI triple by
BRIAN BUTLER and added another in the fourth as Nunes collected an RBI single. The Red Hawks then scored three times in the fifth as Butler and
MATT HARTWICK each had RBI singles. Nunes added a run-scoring triple and scored on an error in the seven for the final two MSU runs.
Nunes, Butler and Rodriguez each had two hits for Montclair State.
The Red Hawks return to action on Sunday, April 30 as they take on William Paterson at Pioneer Park in Wayne at 1:00 pm.
