After Boston College baseball (20-19, 7-14) was swept by Notre Dame last weekend, they hosted No. 14 Virginia (31-11, 12-9) for a three game series.
Thursday’s game was BC’s ALS Awareness Game and it was played at Fenway Park in front of 1,750 people. BC’s pitching finally showed up in a big game and limited the Cavaliers to two runs and six hits and the Eagles won 8-2.
A.J. Colarusso started for BC and threw four scoreless innings, giving up one hit and striking out five. Michael Farinelli followed him with 1.1 innings of scoreless ball and Eric Schroeder earned his fourth win of the season after giving up two runs and collecting five strikeouts over 3 innings.
Catcher Parker Landwehr had a great game, going four-for-four with two runs scored and three runs batted in. He started the scoring with a solo home run to right center field in the third inning. In the next inning, with Kyle Wolff on base, Vince Cimini belted his fifth homer of the year to right field, giving Birdball a 3-0 lead.
BC struck again in the seventh after they loaded the bases with two singles and a walk. Cameron Leary grounded out to first base and Landwehr scored to put the Eagles up 4-0. After Virginia scored in the top of the eighth, BC put the game out of reach in the bottom of the frame.
With no outs and the bases loaded, Cam Caraher drove in a run with a walk. Landwehr followed him with a two-run single, and a few batters later, Wolff was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to push the lead to 8-1.
The series moved to Harrington Athletics Village for Friday’s game. The Birdball pitching staff put together another very good game but Virginia still pulled out a 4-3 win. Nick Wang hit a two-run double in the first to give BC the lead. The Cavaliers tied it in the second but BC reclaimed the lead in the third on a Vince Cimini single. Virginia tied the game again in the top of the sixth and the score would remain 3-3 until the ninth inning.
In the top of the ninth, Virginia put two runners on via a walk and a throwing error. Both runners advanced on a groundout to give the Cavaliers two runners in scoring position with just one out. Virginia’s next batter grounded a ball to second base, where Cimini fielded the ball and attempted to throw out the lead runner at home. But the throw was out of the catcher’s reach, allowing the runner to score and giving Virginia a 4-3 lead that they didn’t relinquish.
The Eagles didn’t fare any better in Saturday’s rubber match, as they lost 4-0. The pitching staff was impressive once again, but the BC offense was held completely in check. Both teams had five hits, but the Eagles left ten runners on base and just didn’t make their scoring opportunities count.
BC now holds a 21-21 overall record and an 8-16 ACC record. They are in 6th place in the Atlantic Division with only have six conference games remaining in the season. Birdball will be back in action on Tuesday when they host UMass Lowell.