May 23, 2012
CLEARWATER, Fla. – No. 2 seed St. John’s had its first eight batters reach base in a seven-run first inning and the Red Storm never looked back en route to a 12-2 victory over No. 7 seed Notre Dame in first day action from the 2012 BIG EAST Tournament Wednesday afternoon at Bright House Field. The Irish dropped to 29-26, while St. John’s improved to 34-21.
Notre Dame will play No. 6 seed Rutgers at 10 a.m. Thursday in an elimination contest. The Scarlet Knights dropped their first round matchup with No. 3 seed Seton Hall, 6-1.
Senior RHP Will Hudgins will take the mound for the Irish, while Rutgers will counter with junior LHP Rob Smorol.
St. John’s exploded out of the gates against Irish freshman RHP Pat Connaughton. The Red Storm collected five straight hits to open the game and all eight batters that Connaughton faced reached base as St. John’s rolled out to a 7-0 lead.
Connaughton did not retire a single Red Storm batter. He was charged with seven runs, all earned, on six hits. Connaughton had allowed just eight earned runs on the season in 38.2 innings of work entering the tournament.
Notre Dame grabbed a couple of runs back in the top of the second inning to cut the deficit to 7-2, but the Red Storm answered with one in the bottom of the second and four more in the bottom of the fourth to push the lead to 12-2.
Sophomore 1B Trey Mancini, who captured last night’s home run derby, went 3-for-4 with a trio of singles and a run scored. Senior RF Alex Robinson also collected a three-hit game. He went 3-for-3 with a run scored. Freshman LF Mac Hudgins went 1-for-3 with an RBI single and junior CF Charlie Markson added a sacrifice fly.
St. John’s starter Matt Carasiti was not overly impressive, but did enough to earn the victory. He evened his record at 5-5 on the season. Carasiti scattered nine hits and allowed two runs, both earned, in 6.0+ innings of work. He struck out four and walked one.
Notre Dame did more than its fair share of scoring opportunities against Carasiti, but was unable to take advantage outside of the second inning. The Irish had a leadoff base runner in every frame from the third inning on, but were unable to score.
Five different Red Storm batters had multi-hit games.
Senior LHP Ryan Richter and freshman RHP Matt Ternowchek combined to toss 2.1 scoreless innings of work. Ternowchek struck out one and allowed one hit in 1.1 innings, while Richter tossed a perfect inning with one punch out.
In-game updates will be available on Twitter at @NDBaseball and Facebook at NDBaseball, and fans can listen to all the action locally on 103.1 FM and on the Internet at UND.com.
— ND —