The University of Maine’s baseball team did its part to try to earn the coveted second-place seeding in the upcoming America East Tournament, but the help it needed from last-place the New Jersey Institute of Technology didn’t come.
UMaine swept Albany at Mahaney Diamond in Orono this weekend, but the University of Maryland Baltimore County took all three games from visiting NJIT to finish one game ahead of UMaine in the battle for second place and a first-round bye for the tournament.
UMaine had the tiebreaker against UMBC but needed NJIT to beat UMBC once. The Retrievers rallied from a 4-0 deficit to win Saturday’s finale 7-4 after securing lopsided victories in the first two games.
UMaine beat Albany 11-6 on Saturday after posting a 12-1 win on Thursday and 7-5 triumph on Friday.
UMaine finished the season by winning six of its last seven conference series but getting swept at home the previous weekend by a struggling UMass Lowell team that had lost its previous seven games proved to be costly.
UMaine will now have to beat Albany a fourth consecutive time as they will meet in the play-in game on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at the Binghamton Bearcats Sports Complex in New York.
Albany ousted UMaine 6-4 in last season’s tourney play-in game in Orono.
UMaine is 22-29 overall and finished up 14-10 in the conference.
Albany is 15-33 and 9-15.
Binghamton (25-19, 18-6) and UMBC (28-22, 15-9) earned the first-round byes in the six-team tournament, which has a single elimination first round followed by a four-team, double-elimination format.
Bryant (27-24, 13-11) and UMass Lowell (19-30, 9-15) will open the tourney at 1 p.m. Wednesday.
On Saturday, UMaine broke a 5-5 tie with six runs in the seventh inning on a bases-loaded walk to Albert De La Rosa, Quinn Murphy’s three-run double and Nic Pepe’s two-run single.
Murphy had a single to go with his double in the game. Pepe had two singles. Hunter St. Denis hit a two-run homer, his 10th of the season, and Juju Stevens had a three-run double.
Jaxon Mueller hit his third homer of the season and also doubled and singled and drove in three runs for Albany; Michael Maggio had three singles and Cooper Loyal, Joe Perri and Justin Hurd had two hits each.
Brennan Rumpf tossed 2 ⅓ innings of three-hit, one-run relief to gain his second win in three decisions.
On Friday, St. Denis doubled home what proved to be the game-winning run in the seventh inning to break a 5-5 tie and fellow freshman Troy Carpenter followed with a run-scoring single.
Stevens walloped a grand slam for the Black Bears and Carpenter had a solo homer to go with his single and knocked in a pair of runs.
It was a team-leading 14th homer for both Stevens and Carpenter.
Mueller had three singles and three RBIs for Albany. Patrick DeSarno and Luke Filippi had two base hits each.
Pierce Friedman improved to 3-1 with 2 ⅓ innings of three-hit, shutout relief.
In Thursday’s opener which was called after six and a half innings due to the 10-run rule, Jason Krieger threw seven innings of two-hit, one-run ball with six strikeouts and no walks and the Black Bears received homers from Stevens, Pepe (6th of the season), De La Rosa (3rd) and Murphy (5th).
Krieger is now 3-6.
Murphy had two singles to go with his homer and Stevens had a base hit to go with his blast.
Tre Mariano had Albany’s hits, his seventh homer and a single.
UMaine head coach Nick Derba said he is looking for more from his team when it faces Albany on Wednesday. He expects to face 6-foot-5 righty Dylan Banner, who threw 2 ⅓ innings of hitless, two-run ball on Friday.
“We’re going to have to beat a good arm. We have to do a much better job doing the little things well. We have to swing at strikes and do a better job throwing strikes. We played pretty clean defense for the most part but our offense has to get better,” said Derba.
