In the playoffs all it takes is a couple of miscues for a team to be beaten. Luckily for GW, the Atlantic 10 tournament uses a double-elimination format.
The No. 6-seed Colonials fell Wednesday morning in their first game to No. 3-seed Richmond 4-1 at The Tuck – the host field of the A-10 championship.
Playing from their home dugout but as the away team and without their usual at-bat music, GW missed a few opportunities, gave up a few and came out on the short side of the box score.
Down 2-0 entering the seventh, GW got exactly what they did and did not want on one play. Sophomore Eli Kashi lined a ball down the right field line with one out and two on to score one run. Then, on his home turf, he slipped up. He tripped on his way to second, continued on, beat the throw but over-slid the bag and was tagged out.
“I ran around first, tripped, tried to get to second, I was safe at second, and then I slipped past it and he tagged me out. What are you going to do? It’s baseball,” Kashi said.
A reliever entered for Richmond senior Ryan Cook (7-2 in the regular season) and retired lead off hitter, sophomore Joey Bartosic with a liner to center that might have been deep enough to score the run on a sacrifice fly. But instead of playing a game of what-ifs, the Colonials had to prepare for their second game of the tournament just hours later, to fight for their postseason lives.
“I told these guys, ‘Hey, it’s nothing new. Game’s a game.’ We evaluate the few mistakes. We move on. We remind ourselves to run the bases better when the ball is hit,” Ritchie said.
Kashi would pick himself up in the bottom of the inning by laying out for a liner in the hole and popping to his feet at third base to record the first out of the seventh.
“Right before that I was talking to the umpire and he was like, ‘What happened? What happened?’ I said I got you after this pitch and then the ball comes to me,” Kashi said. “It’s definitely an extra focus. Not so much you have to make up for it, but ‘alright, I got to sharpen up’.”
But after GW came back to life, a Spider took their breath away and out of the ballpark with a two out homer off a 3-2 fastball. A solo shot on a fastball down the middle with an open base by the eight-hole hitter made the game a two run ballgame again with two frames to tie it up.
The Colonials would be unable to scrape across a run in the eighth or ninth innings. LeWarne was able to save them the bullpen by lasting into the eighth, but he couldn’t finish the inning after throwing away a comebacker past the first baseman to allow the fourth run of the game to score.
The first blip on the day for LeWarne was a two-run home run to the A-10 Player of the Year, graduate student Michael Morman. It exited the park just left of the high center field fence, instead soaring over the lower wall just next to it. The home run in the seventh left the yard in almost an identical location.
“It’s disappointing,” LeWarne said. “I missed a spot but you can’t do that to hitters like this. They’re a good hitting team, so you got to get back into the zone and keep chugging.”
A few bad pitches cost them the game, but they also had their fair share of chances at the plate.
In the third inning with two outs, Bartosic walked. Cook threw over seven times during the next at bat to check on the speedy Colonial, who eventually swiped second. Freshman Robbie Metz walked, but then sophomore Bobby Campbell grounded out on a 2-0 pitch in a missed opportunity for a team who almost always capitalizes on a Bartosic stolen base.
In their final shot of the morning, with two outs in the ninth, sophomore Kevin Mahala stroked a double and Kashi lined a single to center, which Mahala could have potentially scored on. Running mistakes would cost them as well and Bartosic ended the chance at a comeback with a groundout to short.
“The whole game we thought we had it,” Kashi said. “We were right there. At no point was it kind of like, ‘That’s it. We’re done.’ But it’s tough.”
The Colonials will face the loser of one of Wednesday’s afternoon games. They will face Fordham, VCU or Davidson at 8:30 P.M. Wednesday night at The Tuck in the double elimination tournament. Either junior Jacob Williams (3-3, 3.33 ERA) or freshman Robbie Metz (3-3, 3.07 ERA) will start, depending on match ups.
