UNION, N.J. (4/20/15) – A gutsy seven-plus inning pitching performance by Richie Ferguson and a pair of three-run bombs by Anthony Fischetti and Ryan Reitmeyer gave the No. 5/7 Kean University baseball team a pivotal 10-5 NJAC victory over No. 24/22 Rowan University on Friday.
The win puts the Cougars into a tie for first place going into the final day of the regular season. Kean will take on fellow first-place occupant Rutgers-Camden in a doubleheader that will decide the title tomorrow.
After the teams engaged in a 1-0 pitchers' duel on Thursday, the bats awoke early on Friday. Sal Taormina drove in Matt Meleo in the first inning to put Kean on top 1-0. Then in the second, Matt Krupa and Tom McGuckin had basehits before Reitmeyer hit a towering blast over the leftfield wall for his fourth homerun of the season.
Rowan did score one in the third, but in the bottom half of the inning Ryan Kelley, Krupa and McGuckin all swatted singles before Fischetti launched the first pitch he saw to nearly the same spot as Reitmeyer for Kean's second three-run homer in as many innings.
Meanwhile Ferguson (pictured left), who was making his first career start, pitched into the eighth inning and scattered nine hits. His only hiccup occurred when Rowan scored four runs in the fifth inning, but the sophomore battled through the trouble to get nine more outs for the Cougars. He struck out five Profs on the way to earning the 119-pitch victory.
Kean scratched across an unearned run in the fifth when Krupa came in to score on a passed ball, and manufactured a final tally in the eighth when Michael Kendall was hit by a pitch, Meleo singled him to third and he came in to score on a ground ball double play.
Vinny Zanfordino came into a jam for Kean with two on and no outs in the eighth and the tying run on deck. But he forced the first batter he faced into a 1-6-3 double play and ultimately retired five of the six batters he saw to earn the tidy two-inning save.
The Kean defense turned a total of three double plays in the game; Reitmeyer, the shortstop, was involved in each of them.
Ryan Pavlik led Rowan offensively, and went 3-for-4 at the plate.
The doubleheader duel for first-place in the NJAC will begin at 11:30 a.m. in Camden.
