W&J stays unbeaten in CWS, rolls to 10-run victory

APPLETON, Wis. – After falling behind early in consecutive days, Washington & Jefferson settled in the second time through its order and began an onslaught of runs to defeat Roanoke 11-1 in the NCAA Division III College World Series baseball tournament Saturday at Tri Cities Stadium.
Senior pitcher Riley Groves threw seven strong innings, and Derek Helbing and Mark Merlino sparked the hit parade for W&J (40-11), each hitting home runs in the bottom of the fourth inning.
“They had a chance to have more than a 1-0 lead after those three innings, but because that didn’t happen it allowed us to settle in, stay with our plan and be a complete offensive team,” W&J head coach Jeff Mountain said. “We came out on top. I’m happy with how our team competed. We were able to settle into the game and have success.”
Fifth-seeded W&J advances to the bracket’s championship round and it will face the winner of Roanoke-Concordia Chicago game at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Concordia Chicago (34-12) defeated the tournament’s No. 1 seed, Oswego State, in an elimination game, 9-4, Saturday morning.
A win Sunday would assure W&J of a spot in the best-of-3 championship series.
Following the two home runs, it looked easy the rest of the way for the Presidents as they scored multiple runs in each of the next three innings to pad their lead. Meanwhile, Groves, the Presidents’ Athletic Conference Pitcher of the Year, settled down after Roanoke (34-18) took a 1-0 lead on a second-inning sacrifice fly by Drew Mikula.
“You have to tip your hat to W&J,” Roanoke head coach Matt McGuire said. “They dominated us in every facet of the game and outcoached us as well. Groves was outstanding. We got into some pretty good counts but he just made pitches. He beat us. They played extremely well. For the first time in quite some time, I didn’t think we handled adversity well.”
An RBI single by Dante Dalesandro and sacrifice fly from Nick Vento pushed W&J’s lead to 5-1 after five innings. The Presidents scored two more runs in the sixth inning with a Jake Gordon RBI double down the right-field line and a Dalesandro’s run-scoring bunt single.
Groves earned his 11th win of the season , allowing only two hits and one run through seven innings. He also set the program record for innings pitched in a season (86 2/3).
“I didn’t have my best stuff and wasn’t as sharp as I have been in the past outings,” Groves admitted after getting into the heat of the moment and falling out of form at the beginning of the game.
“I think it came down to locating the fastball and trying to get ahead of guys as much as I could.”
Aside from a second-inning single, the only hit for Roanoke was a single to right field in the sixth inning by Sam Weston, which led to a Maroons baserunner being thrown out trying to score by W&J right fielder Nick Vento.
Thirteen of the Presidents’ 14 hits came after their sluggish start in the first three innings, when Roanoke starting pitcher Steven Loney allowed only two balls to be hit out of the infield through the first nine outs.
“(Steven) Loney did an outstanding job through the first three innings,” McGuire said. “(W&J) is the best hitting team in the country. They’re lineup is relentless one through nine and you can’t miss over the plate to that crew. You saw what they did with it when we did. They made us pay every single time.”
Helbing led W&J with a 3-for-3 performance. Kevin Begley, Gordon and Dalesandro each had two hits.
“We’re battled tested,” Mountain said. “It hasn’t been easy for us even going back to our conference tournament. It’s never going to be easy. Nobody is going to roll over. We are going to have to go and win games. I think if things don’t go our way, we’ve proven that we have the resiliency to bounce back from it.”