Over the weekend, William and Mary baseball (10-17, 4-2 CAA) secured its first series victory in over a month, beating conference foe Hofstra (10-17, 2-4 CAA) three times in three days at Plumeri Park in Williamsburg, Va. The sweep broke the Tribe’s three-series losing streak that began after a March 7 defeat at the hands of Kansas State (19-8, 8-1 Big 12). After losing 12 of its 13 games from Feb. 25 to March 15, William and Mary has now won four of its last five.
The wins over the Pride, all of which were decided by one run, launched the Green and Gold into a four-way tie for second in the Coastal Athletic Association standings.
Friday, March 28, William and Mary opened the series with senior starting pitcher Nick Lottchea on the mound. After a scoreless first inning that saw Lottchea pick off two Pride players, the visitors drew first blood in the second frame when Hofstra sophomore infielder Mike Sweeney singled home senior infielder Sean Lane, who reached base on a double that fell out of Tribe senior outfielder Christian Rush’s glove. Lottchea struck out freshman catcher Nick Biddle to limit the damage, but Hofstra claimed a 1-0 lead.
Senior outfielder Lucas Carmichael singled to open the home half of the second, extending his ten-game hitting streak to 11. Junior outfielder Charlie Iriotakis moved Carmichael into scoring position with another single, and Hofstra junior starter pitcher Jackson Bauer hit Rush in the leg to load the bases with no outs.
With the Tribe in position to break the game open, freshman infielder Jamie Laskofski snuck a ball under the glove of diving Hofstra sophomore infielder second baseman Michael Brown, driving home two runs and advancing Rush to third base. Laskofski then stole second base, setting up a pair of sacrifice flies from junior catcher Jerry Barnes III and graduate student infielder Owen Wilson that made the score 4-1 in favor of the Green and Gold.
The third inning saw neither team record any hits, as Lottchea racked up two strikeouts. He was replaced by freshman reliever Tyler Kelly in the top of the fourth, who uneventfully dispatched the middle of the Pride order. The home half of the frame featured similarly little action. Bauer induced fly-outs from Laskofski and graduate student outfielder Ben Parker and a pop-up from Wilson to keep the score 4-1.
It was the top of the fifth where the Tribe’s long-standing pitching woes began to rear their heads. Kelly, who pitched a scoreless fourth, was unable to replicate the feat in the following inning. The freshman gave up a ringing single to Sweeney before allowing Biddle to hit an opposite-field single that put runners on the corners.
A sacrifice fly from Hofstra junior utilityman Dylan Palmer cut the Pride deficit to two. With one man on first and one out, Brown bounced a grounder to Wilson, who made a spectacular stop but failed to transfer the ball to his throwing hand. All runners reached base safely. Hofstra subsequently took a 6-4 lead after a walk, a wild pitch and a three-run home run by Hofstra redshirt junior outfielder Tyler Cox, a sequence that ended Kelly’s day.
William and Mary could not progress in the bottom of the fifth and gave up another run in the top of the sixth, but a Rush home run made the score 7-5. Hofstra strung together two more runs against freshman reliever Jack Weight in the seventh frame. However, a spurt from the Tribe offense kept the Green and Gold within striking distance. Parker doubled, sophomore first baseman Anthony Greco walked and both players stole the base in front of them. Their advanced positioning allowed them to be brought home on a two-run double from graduate student utilityman Derek Holmes.
Carmichael proceeded to lash his second single of the day, moving Holmes to third base. Carmichael was promptly tagged out during a rundown, but with the defense’s attention on his teammate, Holmes scampered across the plate and made the score 9-8 in favor of the Pride.
With the Tribe trailing by one in the top of the eighth, senior reliever Carter Lovasz entered the game and diced up the top of the Pride lineup, coaxing swinging strikeouts from Palmer and Brown.
“For my entire career here, that’s the situation that I’ve loved,” Lovasz said. “Being able to come in with the game on the line and know that I’m coming in in the top of the eighth, that I have six outs that I can go get, give it everything I have for six outs.”
“I really just tried to simplify the game last night, just kind of take it one pitch at a time, and simplify it down to ‘I hear the pitch, I throw the pitch to that spot and just trust that everything else is going to work out and our defense is going to make their plays,’” he said.
Laskofski legged out a single to spark the Tribe’s eighth-inning rally, advancing to second on a Barnes sacrifice bunt.
“Even though it was a left-on-left matchup, he just battles,” Tribe head coach Rob McCoy said regarding Laskofski. “He has a knack for getting the barrel on the ball, and being left-handed, which — we love left-handed hitters that can run, because he puts the ball in play, the shortstop made a great play to even get it and get rid of it, but Jamie’s fast. He beat it out, and that was what we needed to get us started.”
Wilson flew out, but Parker smashed a two-out line drive single into center field, bringing in Laskofski and evening the score at 9-9. Hofstra freshman reliever Brayden Gregg balked Parker over to second base before allowing Greco to muscle a go-ahead single through the right side of the infield.
With the Tribe ahead 10-9, Lovasz returned to the mound in the final frame and struck out three Hofstra batters on ten pitches, securing the Green and Gold’s victory.
“Obviously, give all the credit to our offense because we were down one run and they scrapped in the bottom of the eighth and put together two runs for us to give me a chance to go in and end the game in the top of the ninth,” Lovasz said.
Lovasz described the feeling of performing well at the base.
“It was pretty awesome, but it was one of those where in the moment, you’re not thinking about that,” he added. “You don’t realize what’s going on, you don’t realize that until someone tells you after the game. And I think that’s when you play your best baseball, when you’re not focused on that kind of stuff, you’re just competing one pitch at a time.”
Parker led the way for William and Mary with three hits, a double and an RBI. Holmes only recorded one hit, but it was his pivotal seventh-inning two-run double. Greco went two-for-four with a game-winning single, while Laskofski went two-for-four with two RBIs. Lottchea gave up just one run over 3.0 innings pitched, sophomore pitcher Daniel Lingle posted 1.2 innings of one-run ball in relief of Kelly and Lovasz recorded five strikeouts in a dominant two-inning outing.
“Lottchea came in and did a great job to start,” McCoy said. “Then we went with a freshman in Tyler Kelly. It was a little rough, so we had to bridge. It was a little dicey when we went to Lovasz. We knew he was going to shut it down, but ultimately it came down to us trusting our offense. We kind of knew when we got to their ‘pen we’d put up some more runs.”
“So, it was just a matter of getting Carter [Lovasz] in there and letting him shut it down and give us a chance to catch up,” he said. “You know, our offense is going to speed teams up. I could tell that — we could tell, in our dugout, that they knew we were going to make some runs offensively. So we just needed to lock down the pitching and defense as much as we could to give ourselves a chance to do that.”
Saturday, March 29, the two teams played a game with a much different pace. William and Mary freshman starter Zach Boyd tossed 3.0 scoreless innings, while his counterpart, Pride starting Hofstra graduate student pitcher Tristan Nemjo, gave up just three runs over 6.1 frames.
Carmichael hit his third home run of the previous four games to put the Tribe up 1-0 in the second inning, and Rush dropped an RBI single into center field to extend his team’s lead to 2-0 in the third inning. Two scoreless frames followed, but they were not without action. Sophomore reliever Chad Yates got into trouble in the fifth, loading the bases with no outs and prompting his removal in favor of Lingle.
Hofstra’s Palmer smashed Lingle’s first pitch to the third baseman Laskofski, but the freshman made a heads-up play, firing the ball to home to force out the lead runner and keep the Pride off the board. Brown then grounded into a double play, ending the visitors’ threat.
The Tribe extended its lead in the bottom of the sixth when Holmes hit a double and was brought home by a fly-out from Iriotakis and an RBI sacrifice fly from Laskofski. However, Hofstra jumped on typically sturdy Tribe junior reliever Owen Pierce for three seventh-inning runs, tying the game. Senior reliever Reed Interdonato recorded the final out of the frame for him.
Over his last two appearances, Pierce’s ERA jumped from 1.80 to 4.44. He suffered through a career-worst outing March 22 as North Carolina Agricultural and Technical hammered him for nine hits and six earned runs over 3.2 innings. It marked not only Pierce’s worst outing of the season but the worst outing of his career. Never before had he given up more than five runs in a single appearance. His performance against Hofstra was similarly contrary to his standards.
However, Greco immediately picked up Pierce. After Wilson and Parker reached base with two outs, the sophomore first baseman bounced a single up the middle that brought Wilson home, making the score 4-3 and recording his second clutch go-ahead RBI in as many games.
“He shows up every at-bat,” McCoy said of Greco. “Yeah, sometimes things don’t go well for him, but he’s really sticking to his process and getting centered before each pitch. I feel like he gets better when the pressure is on, and so he’s given us really good at-bats in the same instance. I think a little bit they shifted him a little pull-side because of the day before, so it opened up the middle a little bit for him. He’s good at hitting them where they ain’t.”
Interdonato, who wasn’t originally slated to pitch and was praised by McCoy for taking the mound on short notice, closed out the game, retiring the side in the top of the ninth to secure a Tribe victory.
Sunday, March 30, the teams played a high-scoring thriller that marked perhaps the most exciting game of their series. Before the game, McCoy made it clear that he expected a fast-paced contest.
“We’re going to start [graduate student pitcher] Ryan Feczko, but it’s really all hands on deck,” McCoy said. “[It’s] Sunday, both teams are probably going to hit a lot, and we just need to take punches and punch back.”
McCoy’s prediction was immediately proven correct, as both the Tribe and Pride generated consistent offensive output from the first inning onward. Hofstra took a 3-0 lead during its first time at the plate, hitting two consecutive home runs off of Feczko, but Rush responded in the bottom of the inning by singling home Greco to make the score 3-1. A scoreless second inning from Feczko allowed the Tribe to claw within a run of its opponents after Barnes hit an RBI single down the third-base line.
Cox’s second two-run homer of the game put the visitors up 5-2 in the third inning, but Carmichael responded with his fourth home run in five games, making the score 5-3. An uneventful fourth inning saw both sides make pitching changes, with the Tribe replacing Feczko with sophomore reliever Tom Bourque.
Bourque struggled with his command in the top of the fifth, walking three batters and gifting Hofstra a run after throwing a wild pitch. The Tribe offense responded by ripping off an explosive frame, loading the bases with no outs against Pride freshman reliever Grady Lacourciere. Rush drew a walk to 5-4 before Holmes drilled a double into the center field, clearing the bases and giving his team a 7-5 advantage. A subsequent Barnes single brought home Holmes and staked the Green and Gold to a comfortable 8-5 lead.
After Bourque hit a batter in the top of the sixth, McCoy elected to bring in the freshman Kelly, who gave up two consecutive singles, a walk and a run. With the bases loaded and no outs on the board, Kelly regained his composure, striking out three Hofstra batters to snuff out the Pride threat.
An uneventful bottom of the sixth and top of the seventh gave way to another five-run home frame, as Rush crushed a homer, the Tribe loaded the bases, Wilson walked in a run and Parker hit the Green and Gold’s second bases-clearing double in three innings. The scoreboard now read 13-7 in favor of the hosts.
However, a disastrous outing from the pitching heroes of the first two games allowed the visitors to improbably retake the lead. Interdonato replaced Kelly in the top of the eighth, giving up three quick runs without recording a single out. Lovasz relieved Interdonato, only to walk three batters and give up two doubles and five runs. Lottchea finally shut the door on Hofstra, but the damage had been done, and the Pride led 15-13.
Neither team could get anything going until the game’s final frame, when Parker hit a leadoff single to send Greco to the plate. The late-game hero produced another memorable moment, scratching out an infield single thanks to a lucky bounce of the baseball. Carmichael proceeded to hit a likely double-play ball directly at Hofstra shortstop Sweeney, but a near-collision with the second baseman Brown caused Sweeney to fire an errant throw to first after he forced Greco out, allowing Carmichael to reach safety and Parker to score.
With the scoreboard reading 15-14, Pride sophomore reliever Tanner Sanderoff hit Rush in the back, putting men on first and second with one out. A Holmes flyout advanced Carmichael to third, and Rush made second via defensive indifference. Up to the plate stepped Laskofski with two men in scoring position and his team down to its final out.
The freshman swung through Sanderoff’s first pitch; he took the second. After fouling off a fastball, Laskofski stayed patient as Sanderoff threw two errant pitches that made the count full. Finally, the Tribe infielder hit a blooper into center field, watching as three Pride outfielders desperately tried to get their gloves on it. The ball found grass, Carmichael and Rush raced home and Laskofski was mobbed as his teammates celebrated their third heart-racing win in three days.
In the afternoon, Rush, Parker and Holmes recorded three RBIs each, with the former reaching base five times. The hero Laskofski racked up a career-high tying four hits; over the course of the series, he batted .462 with five RBIs, four runs and two stolen bases, a performance that earned him the CAA Rookie of the Week award.
The Tribe now leads Hofstra 39-22 in the teams’ all-time series, having beaten the Pride in seven of the programs’ last eight meetings.
The Green and Gold will return to the field Tuesday, April 1, when it will attempt to extend its hot streak against VCU (7-20, 2-7 A10) at Plumeri Park in Williamsburg, Va.
