UMass Lowell Baseball: River Hawks Fall to NJIT 10-4 Friday night

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UNION, N.J. – The UMass Lowell baseball team (7-15, 2-5 AE) fell to the NJIT Highlanders (11-10, 6-1 AE) 10-4 on Friday night at Jim Hynes Stadium.

“They got a couple of balls up in the jet stream and we never answered,” said head coach Ken Harring. “LJ [Keevan] will be better from this outing. We will regroup and be ready to go tomorrow.”

Senior Gerry Siracusa (Kinnelon, N.J.) and junior Cedric Rose (Pittsfield, Mass.) led the team with two hits each. Rose and Siracusa each scored one run, along with sophomore Jimmy Sullivan (East Hampton, Conn.) and freshman Jacob Humphrey (Standish, ME.) to round out the offense.

Freshman LJ Keevan (Holden, Mass.) threw 5.0 innings and struck out seven hitters in the loss. Sophomore Michael Quigley (Halifax, Mass.) struck out three in 1.0 inning while junior Brian Gaughan (Walpole, Mass.) closed the game, throwing 2.0 innings and striking out two.

The Highlanders took a 1-0 lead in the first inning before Jimmy Sullivan tied the game at 1-1 with a solo home run, his first of the year. After a 1-2-3 second inning for Keevan, the hosts took the lead again in the third with a pair of solo home runs for a 3-1 advantage.

The River Hawks’ defense struggled to keep NJIT off the board as the hosts held a 4-1 lead in the fourth inning. A grand slam from Albert Choi gave the Highlanders a commanding 8-1 lead. Cedric Rose hit his fourth home run of the season in the fifth inning, a solo shot to cut the lead to 8-2. NJIT added runs in the fifth and eighth inning to take a 10-2 lead into the ninth.

Sophomore Fritz Genther (Kingston, N.Y.) was walked to start the ninth inning before Humphrey and Siracusa both reached to give UMass Lowell a chance to cut into the lead with the bases load. Freshman Jake Fitzgibbons (Franklin, Mass.) reached on a fielder’s choice and brought in two runs in the ninth to make it a 10-4 game, but that would be the end of the comeback effort. NJIT took game one of the weekend series.