Softball Sweeps DH At Rutgers, Improves To 6-6

Report based on CSTV's Gametracker

Piscataway, N.J.- The former was statistically authoritative and ultimately breezy. The latter was cringe-inducing and mythically epic.

Both of the installments of Saturday’s visit to the Rutgers Softball Complex involved the Friars veiling a quaky defense. First, top hurler Danielle Bertollette stuffed up three unstable innings while her teammates proceeded to shower on the hits towards a 7-1 victory.

The second game had an ominous start as Jennifer Maccio found herself in a 3-1 deficit through one inning, part of it attributable to two PC errors (by day’s end, the Friars had a two-game total of five blunders). But like Bertollette before her, Maccio recompensed. Heavily helping her own cause with two credited put-outs and five assists, she held the Scarlet Knights scoreless even as they snuck in at least one hit for every inning but the seventh.

By that point, Providence had inched its way back against the unyielding Rutgers starter Crissy Yard. Trailing 3-2 with three outs to work with, they launched a decisive offensive towards a 6-3 victory, sweeping the set and improving to 6-6 in conference action.

Yard, who had only allowed one run in the first and fourth while stamping 1-2-3 ventures in the second, third, and fifth, went all roly-poly when it came time to wrap things up. Julie Fowler brought Samantha Pittmann home from third to knot things up and hustled to second when Katelyn Revens bunted her way to first.

Yard’s crumbling process explicitly surfaced when a wild pitch to Jen Garcia put both runners in scoring position. And by the time Garcia had hit a productive fly to Amanda Heller in right and PC’s top slugger Mary Rose Sheehy cleared things up with a home run, the score was solidified and Yard’s once-fail-safe complete game was cut off by 1/3 of an inning.

Nicole Lindley, who took the bulk of PC’s punishment in Game 1, finished the top half of the inning before Maccio wrapped up her less likely CG, even after leadoff Malory Miller tiptoed to third on an error, a sac grounder, and a wild pitch. She would be stranded when Mandy Craig, already 2-for-2 with two RBI on the game, flew out to Gina Rossi in left.

To start their go-around with Maccio (now 8-5 overall this season), the Knights made a burning point of doing what they couldn’t do in Game 1 to her cut-above colleague Bertollette: cash in when the ball got buttery.

Maccio issued a leadoff walk to Amanda Shaw , who completed the tour home on a Mallory Miller single to left and an error on the part of Revens at third, which put Kate Valiante on first and Miller at second. Both of those runners inched into scoring position on a wild pitch against Craig who knocked them both home and then took a free ride to second on Justine Stratton’s misfire out of right, officially branded the Friars’ second error of the inning.

In the next two innings, Maccio virtually laid out and singlehandedly escaped from her own muddle. With two on and one away in the second, she zapped a liner by Heller and thrust it to first for a spontaneous double-play. In the third, she cut down Miller by handing a Craig grounder over to Revens before Kim Hodges grounded to third, pacifying another red scare.

Meanwhile, PC’s bat rack –which, Jen Garcia’s first inning bomber aside, took the first three innings to recuperate from its indulgent Game 1 scoring spree- thawed out in the fourth for its first legitimate threat against Yard. Leading off, Sheehy –who at day’s end was tops in the Big East with a .404 batting average- doubled to right center and Christy Becker singled to place runners at the corners. Stratton’s sac fly to left field brought Sheehy home to cut the deficit to 3-2, but Pittmann grounded out to end the round.

The Friars spilled a glowing opportunity to pull ahead in the sixth when Yard, in regular Maccio fashion, snared Rossi’s grounder and turned to first for the second out, placing the likes of Sheehy and Becker in scoring position. But Stratton flew out to left for the third out, forcing PC to save its epic juice for the final inning, wherein Yard would double her hit count from four to eight and bloat her batters-faced total from 23 to 31.

Game 1: Through the completion of Game 1, the Friars had stamped the first half of their Big East schedule and replenished the strength of their record with a fourth straight intra-league triumph.

Bertollette, who bulked up her record to 11-8 in her team-leading ninth complete game on the year, breezed through the fifth and sixth innings after Rutgers put her through a flustering tangle in the previous three frames. Over the second, third, and fourth, Bertollette admitted half of 18 faced batters to the bags, two of them hit batsmen, five on singles, and another a run-scoring double by Craig in the second, which halved the Friar lead to 2-1.

Otherwise, the Providence defense had their unflagging hurler’s back, restricting the salivating Knights to that single run. Two batters after Craig, with the sacks juiced, Bertollette foiled Kim Hodges’ scoring attempt from third by tossing a grounder right back to catcher Teresa Bertels.

In the third, Rutgers threatened with the same royal flush laid out with one out before Hodges chopped on to shortstop Jenna Garcia. Garcia likewise cut down aspirant scorer Amanda Heller –the only Knight who hit Bertollette twice on the game.

The Friars –who in the first had sculpted the initial 2-0 lead on a two-out passed ball break and Justine Stratton’s follow-up single- similarly tormented the Knights fielding, but left their next four potential scorers stranded, even whilst chunking the Rutgers starter Lindley on six hits.

But PC perked back up in the fourth after a throwing error and a sacrifice bunt by Fowler inched both Samantha Pittmann and Bertels to scoring position, a savory setup for Revens’ single and Garcia’s two-run double after Reven took the liberty to steal second.

By her day’s end, briefly paused in the fourth in favor of Katye Hamlin, Lindley had allowed all seven Friar runs (two of them unearned) on 14 hits, three of them two-baggers.

Bertollette stabbed the scarlet tempest for the final three innings, save for a leadoff single in the seventh by Shaw. Shaw would shuffle to second on Miller’s sacrifice effort but was left stranded when Revens stamped the final out on a line drive to third.

Men's Lacrosse 10, Mt. St. Mary's 5: Friars Set Early Pace, Top Mountaineers

At the 4:41 mark of Saturday’s first quarter, Mt. St. Mary’s coach Tom Gravante called a superficially rational timeout, his team already having relinquished two goals to the Friars.

At nearly the same point of the second quarter, PC boss Chris Burdick, his guys now up 4-1, was compelled to ask for his own freeze-frame. The Friars were engaged in a prolonged, futile swarm around the Mountaineer cage after they had just shaken off two man-down segments –one 30-second and one a full minute- to start the frame.

But seven seconds after play resumed and fresh group of cleats was deployed, midfielder Mark Dillon picked up Bobby Labadini’s frozen play top right, churned around a block of challengers, and thrust home his second of four goals on the day. Providence proceeded to match its first quarter output and pace itself to an eventual 10-5 victory, bulking them up to 4-0 at the half of their MAAC schedule.

In front of a more-than-brimful audience drawn to the field by the Alumni Weekend festivities and barbeque, the Friars revved up their own griller comfortably early and exploited a curious discrepancy between themselves and the 2008 installment of the Mountaineers. Once a guaranteed roadblock in PC’s annual endeavor for a MAAC banner and NCAA ticket, Mt. St. Mary’s this year is in deep refilling mode with 16 freshmen out of 30 rostered players.

Up until the fourth quarter, at which point the Friars had curtained their scoring for the day, the Mountaineers thawed out enough to stir more lengthy trips to the attacking zone and translated it to three pride-salvaging strikes, all assisted by senior Joe Derwent (game total of one goal, four assists) and two scored by promising frosh Jon Rodrick.

Well in advance of all that, however, the likes of Dillon (four goals and one assist); Jackson Fallon (three goals, one assist); Colin Tigh (two goals) and Robert Lamontagne (goal-helper package) all charged up their own multi-point transcripts for the Friars.

Dillon, who pole-vaulted over Bennett Murphy (one assist) for the team lead with 17 points, sparked the salvo 50 seconds into the game, accepting a return feed from Fallon and converting a high straightaway toss.

Less than three minutes later, after a similar back-and-forth game of catch with Fallon, Dillon found Lamontagne open along the far post. Lamontagne connected on a bounce shot for the 2-0 lead.

Granvante’s subsequent timeout did anything but instill quick relief for the Mountaineers. They needed to gulp another PC goal courtesy Fallon 28 seconds after play picked up before Derwent eventually put them on the board at 6:16, recovering an errant feed at the brim of the Friars’ zone, strolling in, and sneaking one inside the left post.

Tigh restored his club’s three-goal edge at 9:18, looping around the far half of the net unassisted and unchallenged.

The scoring pattern of the second quarter echoed that of the opener with Dillon, Fallon, and Tigh augmenting the difference to 7-1 between the 4:41 and 13:15 marks.

With a slim 19 ticks to spare until the half, Geery Grant revived the Mountaineer sideline by making things 7-2. But in that narrow window, Burdick settled his boys down with another timeout before Dillon picked up the play and made another conversion visually identical to what he conjured ten minutes earlier with 0:04 remaining.

MSM goalkeeper Kyle Overs relieved starter T.C. DiBartolo and generally compressed the wounds in the second half. For the bulk of the third quarter, Providence preserved the time-of-possession imbalance and tacked on two more spaced-out strikes via Fallon and Dillon.

Although, Dillon’s finale, coming with at 13:05, had an extra dollop of fulfillment as it snapped the Friars’ daylong EMO deficiency.

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

Boston College 5, Men's Hockey 1: Friars Marooned Again, Season Over

Chestnut Hill, Mass.- In the early, heavily decisive portion of Saturday’s game, one item after another surfaced at the top of the bubble-laden Friars’ Top 10 “Very Last Things We Need” list. And in equal time, the Boston College Eagles swooped in and took the liberty of checking each item off. It was an updating development so rapid even David Letterman might not have been able to keep pace with it.

A four-goal blizzard within the first fifteen minutes of play climaxed when BC’s mighty mite net-stuffer Nathan Gerbe gathered the puck in his own end, bolted loose to the Friar cage, and then earned a penalty shot when he was tugged by backchecker Pierce Norton. In the one-on-one bid, Gerbe froze with his back to PC goaltender Ryan Simpson before slipping the puck under a kneeling Simpson’s arm, granting the Eagles a 4-0 edge at 14:35.

The Friars compressed the abysmal bleeding afterward, but the score eventually morphed into a 5-1 final, giving BC a 2-0 sweep of the Hockey East quarter-final set and curtaining the 2007-08 installment of the Tim Army Corps.

Between the two butcheries –PC dropped Friday’s series opener by the same score and for many of the same reasons- Army had kept his solution to the goaltending muddle undeclared right up to Saturday’s face-off. In the pre-game warmup, usual starter Tyler Sims led the team onto the ice, hinting that Army was banking on his recovery from an athletic breed of senioritis.

When the Friars reemerged for player introductions, Simpson was the first man on, and the sophomore would perform his first start-to-finish game of the season. But it would pan out in parallel fashion to what proved to be Sims’ last collegiate bow.

By the 2:18 mark of the opening frame, the Eagles were 2-for-4 in terms of shots against Simpson. They first struck at 1:26 when right pointman Mike Brennan absorbed a forward shipment by Brian Gibbons and drilled an ice-kisser for a screening Ben Smith to guide home.

Within another minute, freshman phenom Joe Whitney scooped the remnants of PC’s first shot by Eric Baier, raced it down the far boards and thrust it over to Tim Kunes in the central alley. Kunes left a rebound for an incoming Benn Ferriero to bury.

Six minutes later, with 8:36 expired, Boston made it 3-0 when Dan Bertram ricocheted a face-off win off the near boards and right into the clutch of Carl Sneep at the right circle-top. Sneep’s magnetic slapper turned Simpson to stone as it eluded his mitt.

By the time Gerbe struck, the Eagles were running away with a 12-3 shooting edge, 15-6 at intermission. Afterwards, though, the Friar offense evoked a distinctive rabidity that had not been seen all weekend. In the middle frame, they drenched BC stopper John Muse with 17 registered whacks versus only one Eagle stab at Simpson.

At 2:48, Providence hit the board on their fifth of what would be eleven spaced-out, unanswered bids. Defender Matt Taormina, who had already whiffed twice on one play, discharged a third bid from the center point into a dense forest in front of Muse. Ian O’Connor got a piece of it to guide it home.

 

Other than that, Muse withstood everything that was thrown at him, including a post-whistle hack by a flustered Jon Rheault at 10:23. That move and resultant fisticuffs landed two Friars and two Eagles in the bin with a cumulative 43 penalty minutes –including a major to Rheault an 10-minute misconducts to the likes of Norton, Ferriero, and Nick Petrecki.

The Friars confined the puck to the BC for much of the third period as well, mustering another 14 shots, but cultivated nothing. Around the halfway mark, meanwhile, the Eagles drilled the dagger courtesy of Gibbons. Linemate Gerbe lassoed a feed from Smith out of the far corner and nimbly handed it off to Gibbons, who zapped his second point of the night in low.

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press