March 31, 2005
Box Score
BOSTON, Mass. - Senior Matt Sullivan (Nashua, N.H.) set a school record as he extended his hitting streak to 15 games, but the University of Rhode Island baseball team lost to Boston College, the No. 3 ranked team in the Northeast, by a 7-3 margin on Thursday at Northeastern's Friedman Field.
Sullivan finished the game 2-for-4 with a home run and two runs scored in raising his batting average to .323. He hit safely for the 15th-straight game, which broke the record for longest hitting streak shared at 14 by Dan Batz (2004) and Mike Schiappa (2002). Sullivan did not get a hit in the first two games of the season, but has batted .355 since with six multi-hit games.
Sullivan is second on the team in batting average, behind junior Daryl Holcomb (Wilmington, Del.), who went 1-for-2 with a run scored Thursday.
The Rams took a 2-1 lead in the third inning on a sacrifice fly by sophomore Scott Brown (Portland, Maine) and a lined double by sophomore Ryan Cunningham (Centreville, Va.), but Boston College (15-6) tied the game in the fourth and used a three-run fifth to pull away.
Sullivan hit his second home run of the season to slice the gap to 5-3, but the Eagles added an unearned run in the seventh and another run in the eighth for the final margin of victory.
"Boston College has a great team, they're one of the class teams in New England and the Northeast this year," Rhode Island head coach Frank Leoni said. "You can't give a team like that extra scoring opportunities because they are going to take advantage of them.
"There were a few times when we didn't execute defensively and there were a couple of bad pitches that a team like BC is going to capitalize on," Leoni said. "Other than a few mistakes though, I thought we played a solid baseball game."
Boston College took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning with a single, walk and RBI-single by Drew Locke.
The Rams came back in the top of the third to take a 2-1 lead. Holcomb led off with a walk and Sullivan singled to center to keep his hitting streak alive. With runners on first and third, Brown hit a sac fly to deep left center that scored Holcomb to tie the game. Cunningham followed with a liner to left that went all the way to the wall, allowing Sullivan to score from first and give Rhody the lead.
The Eagles tied the game with one swing of the bat in the fourth, when Locke opened the inning with a homer. In the bottom of the fifth, BC would get to Rhode Island starter James Norcott (Norton, Mass.) for three runs on four hits, all of them singles, to take a 5-2 advantage.
Rhode Island's Gil Pina (Warwick, R.I.) came on in relief in the fifth and would retire the first four batters he faced and five of the six over an 1 2/3 innings.
Boston College's Terry Doyle pitched three innings, allowing two hits and one run to earn the win and improve to 2-0 on the season. Nick Asselin picked up his second save with two innings of one-hit relief.
The defending Atlantic 10 regular-season champion Rams head to Dayton for a three-game set with the Flyers (16-7, 3-0 Atlantic 10) beginning with a doubleheader on Saturday at noon. All three games of the series will be available on Gametracker here at GoRhody.com.
