Seton Hill baseball falls to Bloomsburg in PSAC championship series

Home runs have been a friend of Seton Hill baseball this season, but the long ball came back to haunt the Griffins in their bid for a third Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship in five years.

Bloomsburg homered five times to produce all its runs, and the Huskies won the PSAC title on Saturday, ousting No. 6 Seton Hill, 6-2, in the deciding game of a best-of-three championship series at SHU Baseball Complex.

“They hit our best pitches, they hit our worst pitches and I just totally tip my cap,” Seton Hill coach Marc Marizzaldi said. “If we would’ve played them three more times this week, they would’ve probably beaten us three more times if they played the same way and we did what we did.”

Seton Hill (35-6) led the PSAC with 57 home runs, including playoff games, but after Saturday’s onslaught, Bloomsburg finished just two off the Griffins’ total with 55.

“We do hit some home runs,” Bloomsburg coach Mike Collins said. “We’ve done it before. That’s kind of our thing.”

The Huskies, who rallied from a 1-0 series deficit by winning the final two games — they split a doubleheader on Friday, ending Seton Hill’s 12-game winning streak with a victory in the second game — got two home runs from Ben Newbert and one each from Anthony Viggiano, Carter Chasanov and Gianni Sinatore on Saturday.

Jared Marshman pitched Bloomsburg’s second consecutive complete game, allowing just five hits and two earned runs. He struck out nine, walked none and survived a pair of hit batsmen.

“That’s the story of the game, if you want to know what I think,” Collins said. “That kid, we call him ‘Friday Night Lights.’ He was a high school quarterback, and a really good one in Pennsylvania, and he’s just kind of a gamer. He’s got good stuff, but he always gives us his best effort when we need it. I felt good about pitching him out there today.”

Marshman (5-1), a redshirt sophomore who attended Berwick High School, pitched eight innings, striking out eight in a 5-2 victory over West Chester in a PSAC play-in game May 12.

“He’s an ultimate competitor,” Collins said. “The fact that he came out here and did this today is not a total shock. He’s done this for us before.”

Vincenzo Rauso’s two-run double accounted for Seton Hill’s only scoring and gave the Griffins a short-lived 2-1 lead in the fourth after Sinatore’s solo homer in the top of the inning against Jon McCullough (3-1) put Bloomsburg ahead 1-0.

Viggiano’s two-run homer and Chasanov’s solo shot came back-to-back and chased McCullough. Newbert added solo home runs in the sixth off Kevin Vaupel and in the eighth against Cade Negley.

“That’s the sign of a great team that’s on a mission,” Marizzaldi said. “They immediately responded (almost) every time we took the lead.”

Seton Hill managed only 12 hits in the three-game series, including just two in a 7-5 victory in Friday’s first game, when Tyler Peterson’s grand slam accounted for the Griffins’ only homer of the series.

Bloomsburg’s consecutive victories Friday and Saturday against Seton Hill represented the Griffins’ only home losses in 25 games.

Marshman’s pitching performance was reminiscent of the Huskies’ 9-2 victory in the series’ second game Friday, when Michael Standen pitched a five-hitter, striking out 11 and walking none.

By winning the PSAC title, Bloomsburg (23-16) earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Division II Atlantic Region Tournament, which begins Wednesday at the University of Charleston (W.Va.). The Huskies will join Seton Hill, the top-ranked team in the region and ranked No. 6 in the National Collegiate Baseball Writers’ Association, in the tournament field.

Pairings for all eight Division II regionals will be announced Sunday.

“We’ll give them a couple days off,” Marizzaldi said, looking over at his players, who were still milling around the Seton Hill dugout as Bloomsburg continued its celebration across the field.

“They need some time to get past this,” he said. “For me, after the game’s over, you immediately turn your attention to the next round. I don’t know if they’ll really be able to do that right away. But maybe in a day or two.

“I just think they need a couple days for this to kind of settle, and then we can refocus … focus on a bigger goal, and that’s to get to the (Division II) World Series.”