Courtesy of Cortland Sports Information
AUBURN, N.Y. – Swarthmore's Ricky Conti outdueled Cortland's Christian Dufresne (Cocoa, FL/Space Coast) in a pair of complete games and the fifth-seeded Garnet edged the top-seeded Red Dragons, 3-2, at the NCAA Division III Baseball New York Regional.
Cortland (33-11), ranked ninth nationally, will face St. Joseph's (Long Island) in an elimination game Saturday at 2 p.m. at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse. The game was originally scheduled for Saturday morning in Auburn, but has been relocated to OCC due to poor forecasted weather.
Swarthmore (35-9) will play in the winner's bracket final of the double-elimination tournament Saturday at 5:15 p.m. versus either Salisbury or Southern Maine.
In addition to the change of time and location of Cortland's game Saturday, the other three games on Saturday's schedule have been changed to later times of 2 p.m., 5:15 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. The Cortland-St. Joseph's winner is schedule to play the 8:45 p.m. game against an opponent to be determined.
Conti improved to 12-2 after allowing nine hits and two runs with four strikeouts and no walks. Dufresne (4-3) gave up three runs on 10 hits over eight innings with four strikeouts and two walks.
Swarthmore went up 2-0 in the bottom of the second. Jared Gillen walked and scored on a Coleson Hebble RBI double to right center. Hebble scored one out later on a Kenji Yoshii RBI single.
Cortland tied the game in the top of the third. Antonio Pragana (Hopewell Junction/John Jay) led off with a double that found its way inside the tarp in the left field corner. He scored two batters later on Patrick Schetter's (Beacon) RBI single. Matthew Personius (Binghamton/Chenango Valley) singled to move Schetter to third and Justin Teague (North Syracuse/Cicero-North Syracuse) tied the game with an RBI fielder's choice.
Swarthmore scored what held up as the winning run in the bottom of the fourth. With two outs, AJ Liu singled up the middle and Charles Levitt hit an RBI double to right.
Cortland left 10 on base, including runners in scoring position in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings. The Red Dragons loaded the bases with one out in the sixth on a Joe Tardif(Cutchogue/Mattituck) single, a Marcos Perivolaris (Mattituck) hit-by-pitch and, after a force at third on a bunt, a Paul Dondero (East Islip) bunt single. Conti, however, recorded a strikeout and a fielder's choice force out to end the threat.
In the seventh, the Red Dragons had runners on first and third with one out after an error and a one-out Teague single. Tardif hit a line drive up the middle, but the Garnet turned it into an inning-ending double play. Conti retired the side in order in the eighth and ninth innings to finish off the win.
Levitt finished 2-for-3 with a walk and RBI, Hebble was 2-for-4 with an RBI and Liu went 2-for-4 with a run for Swarthmore. Personius finished 2-for-4 and seven other Red Dragons registered one hit apiece.
