UNIONDALE, N.Y. (May 19, 2022) – Sophomore Ian Battipaglia (Cheshire, Conn.) socked a three-run triple to break a 3-3 tie in the top of the seventh on Thursday evening, and senior right-hander Jake Ursillo (North Haledon, N.J.) slammed the door with three innings of scoreless relief, as the sixth-seeded Franklin Pierce University baseball team opened the NCAA Championship East Regional with a 6-4 victory over third-seeded Adelphi. East Regional play is being hosted by Molloy, at Mitchel Athletic Complex.

With the win, Franklin Pierce improves to 29-15, and will face host and two-seed Molloy in a winners' bracket game at 3 p.m. on Friday, after the Lions defeated seventh-seeded Le Moyne, 5-4, in 12 innings earlier on Thursday. With the loss, Adelphi falls to 30-14-2, and will face elimination against Le Moyne at 11 a.m. on Friday.

After a disappointing two-and-out a year ago, Thursday marked the first win in NCAA play for the Ravens since a 4-3 win over Adelphi in the 2019 tournament.

Franklin Pierce staked itself to an early 2-0 lead, scoring a run via a balk in the top of the second, and another courtesy of a two-out RBI single by junior Graham Smith (Wilmington, Mass.) in the top of the third, while sophomore right-hander Kyle Roche (Braintree, Mass.) largely cruised through the first four innings. Adelphi turned the tables in the fifth though. With one out and one on, graduate student Jack Ryan bounced a ball to third and narrowly beat out the back end of the double-play attempt to reach with a fielder's choice and keep the inning alive.

In the aftermath of the bang-bang play at first, Roche momentarily lost his handle on the game. He issued a walk to junior Matt Alifano to put the tying run on base, then left a ball up to junior Anthony Cipri and paid dearly for it. Cipri unloaded to right field for a three-run home run, his fifth of the season.

The Franklin Pierce lineup immediately rallied behind its sophomore hurler in the top of the sixth. With one out and nobody on, graduate student Charles Lebron (Brooklyn, N.Y.) yanked a laser down the right-field line, which he narrowly kept fair, as it rang off the foul pole for his eighth home run of the season, to level the game at 4-4. Following a boisterous celebration from Lebron and the Ravens, Adelphi graduate student right-hander Nicolas Luc hit sophomore Jose Savinon (Brooklyn, N.Y.) with the next pitch, which caused tempers to flare momentarily, but order was restored by the umpiring crew before things got out of hand.

The turning point came in the top of the seventh, as Luc ran into trouble he could not escape. Sophomore Ryan Lavelle (East Longmeadow, Mass.) started things with a one-out single back up the middle and then stole second. With two outs, Flores and Smith walked on six pitches apiece, which set the table for Battipaglia. Luc's 108^th pitch of the day (72 strikes) would be his last, as he left it up to the shortstop, who drove it the other way, deep into the gap in right-center, for a three-run triple, to push the Ravens out front, 6-3.

Adelphi got one back in the bottom half, but would get no closer. Freshman C.J. Picone took a leadoff walk, which spelled the end of the day for Roche, after 104 pitches (67 strikes), as the sidewinding Ursillo took over on the mound. Ursillo would hit a batter, throw a wild pitch and surrender a sacrifice fly to Cipri, but halted the damage there. Over the final two innings, Ursillo allowed just a leadoff walk and a two-out infield single in the eighth, then eventually struck out the final two batters of the game in the ninth to finish off the nine-out save, his second of the season.

Roche (6-2) finished with a line of four runs against on four hits over six-plus innings, walked two and struck out five. Luc (3-2) was charged with six runs (five earned) on six hits over 6.2 innings, walked three and struck out nine.