MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Saint Anselm College baseball team welcomes Assumption University to campus on Wednesday for a 3 p.m. nine-inning contest to be played at Sullivan Park.
Saint Anselm has won four games in a row, improving to 10-11 overall on the year and to 5-9 against Northeast-10 Conference opponents. The Greyhounds have won two games in a row, improving to 6-8, both overall and against league foes.
With the four game sweep of Saint Michael's on Friday and Saturday, the Hawks have won four consecutive games against an NE10 opponent for the first time since the 2013 season. The Hawks also flexed their offensive muscle in the series, hitting nine home runs in the series.
Assumption dropped the first two games against Bentley on Sunday, Apr. 18, but rebounded to take back-to-back wins against the Falcons on Monday, Apr. 19. Bentley entered the series with an impressive 9-3 overall record and the squad has since improved to 14-8, giving the Greyhounds two signature victories near the midpoint of the season.
As the games were originally scheduled to be played at Assumption, Saint Anselm will bat at the top of each inning.
Live Statistics and Live Video of Wednesday's game is available via the NE10 Now Network. As a reminder, off-campus spectators are not permitted to attend home Saint Anselm athletics contests.
SCOUTING SAINT ANSELM
The Hawks lead the NE10 with 32 home runs in 21 games and have exactly double (16) the second place team, Assumption. From the 2016-20 season, Saint Anselm logged only 30 home runs in 179 games played.
Sophomore Brady Doran (Stony Brook, N.Y.) and junior Kyle Maurice (Exeter, N.H.) lead the NE10 with seven home runs this season. Junior Mike Pierro (North Andover, Mass.) has five long balls and junior Dan Baker (Reading, Mass.) joins sophomore Mike Borrelli (Salisbury, Mass.) with four home runs on the season.
Pierro was the offensive star for Saint Anselm in the Saint Michael's four-game series, slugging four home runs and batting .500 with seven hits in 14 at-bats. Collectively, the Hawks stroked nine home runs in the four games to give them 32 on the season – that mark is the fourth-best in team history. The all-time team record of 45 home runs was set in 2001.
On Friday, Saint Anselm hit seven home runs in a doubleheader for the first time since Apr. 10, 2011 when the Hawks eased their way to victories of 13-1 and 10-0 against Merrimack at Sullivan Park.
Saint Anselm honored its seven senior student-athletes with a pre-game ceremony on Saturday, including Ben Horsfall (Westborough, Mass.), Patrick Henning (Guilderland, N.Y.), Will Conaton (Windham, N.H.), Salvatore Pezzolla (East Greenbush, N.Y.), Max Silverman (Westford, Mass.), Brian Wojichowski (Portsmouth, R.I.) and Ryan Schworer (Medfield, Mass.).
Sophomore Dylan Bedder (New Providence, N.J.) earned Nortehast-10 Conference Pitcher of the Week honors on Monday. Against Saint Michael's on Friday in the series-opening 4-0 victory, Bedder gave up just three hits through eight scoreless innings of work. He also struck out a career-high 11 batters, keeping the Hawks in the game when their lead was only 1-0 through the first seven complete frames.
On the season, Bedder has made five appearances, striking out 38 batters in just 23 innings of work. He owns a 2-3 record, winning his season debut against American International and striking out at least five batters in each of his games to date. His 14.87 strikeouts-per-nine-innings ranks second in the NE10 and eighth in NCAA Division II.
The Hawks have turned 17 double plays, tying Saint Michael's for the NE10 lead on defense. Additionally, Saint Anselm ranks fourth in the NE10, catching 24.4% of would-be base stealers.
ASSUMPTION ANECDOTES
The Greyhounds finished 5-8-1 in the 2020 season prior to the cancellation of spring sports, playing all of their games in North Carolina or Florida to open the year. On Mar. 3, the Greyhounds earned the fourth spot in the Northeast Division of the Northeast-10 Conference Preseason Coaches' Poll.
Matt Schneider hit .324 at the plate, which led all Greyhounds last season - he was named NE10 Player of the Week once. Schneider and his classmate, Matt Lonardo, both finished the 2020 season with a team-leading three home runs while Jake Hamel led Assumption with 14 runs batted in.
On the mound, Cole Chudoba posted a 0.66 earned run average over four games and 27.1 innings pitched. He finished the season with a 3-0 record and struck out a total of 26 batters.
Brendan Desautels is second in NCAA Division II with a 21.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio while Chudoba ranks second in that statistic. Furthermore, Chudoba's earned-run average of 1.42 is ranked second in the NE10 and 13th nationally.
Connor Wironen is batting a team-leading .319, racking up 15 hits in 47 at-bats. He also has five runs driven in and has swiped team-leading three bases on the year. Lonardo has a team-best five doubles and a home run – six of his 10 hits on the year have gone for extra bases.
ALL-TIME vs. ASSUMPTION
The Greyhounds hold a 72-47-1 record against the Hawks since both teams played each other for the first time on May 1, 1982. That day, the Hawks fell 9-1 in game one and then 15-2 in the second contest.
Assumption has claimed 11 consecutive victories over the Hawks since Apr. 22, 2017. The Hawks' last wins over the Greyhounds came back in 2017 on Mar. 9 in a neutral site contest down in Winter Park, Fla., when the team claimed an 8-2 win.
On Mar. 31 of this season, Assumption swept the Hawks in a doubleheader. The Greyhounds won via scores of 9-2 and 7-3 in their season-opening set of games.
The Hawks came out firing in the first inning with two home runs before the Greyhounds' bats came alive, scoring nine runs and not allowing a Hawks run for the rest of the game to claim the nine-inning win.
Playing seven innings in game two, the Greyhounds pitching powered the contest with Desautels firing 11 strikeouts. Baker got the Hawks on the board in the sixth inning, hitting a three-run home run.
