Baseball Fall to Merrimack 4-1 Tuesday
Boxscore

NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. (Apr. 26, 2005) - Freshman Mike Chandler hit a walk off grand slam with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning to lead the Merrimack College baseball team to a 4-1 win over Bryant University in a Northeast-10 contest on Tuesday afternoon at Warrior Field.

Merrimack snapped a four-game losing streak to improve to 6-24 overall, 5-14 in the Northeast-10, while Bryant lost its fourth straight game to fall to 17-16, 11-10.

Chandler (Hamilton, Mass.) capped a ninth inning rally with a blast over the left field fence for his first career home run.

Freshman Ryan Shepard (Andover, Mass.) started the rally with a one-out single to right center. After a strikeout, freshman Nick Karthas (Botwell, Wash.) dropped a single into left field. Junior Jeff Ghiloni (South Portland, Maine) loaded the bases when he reached on a fielding error by the shortstop to set up Chandler's game winning grand slam.

Junior righthander Mike Lanciani (Andover, Mass.) threw a complete game five hitter to pick up the win for the Warriors, striking out four and allowing no walks to pick up his first win of the season. Bryant freshman Eric Loh (Old Greenwich, Conn.) was the tough luck loser, allowing seven hits with eight strikeouts and no walks in a complete game loss.

The Bulldogs took a quick 1-0 lead when junior Adam Rourke (Rowley, Mass.) led off the game with a single, then advanced to third on a stolen base and a wild pitch. He scored on an RBI single by sophomore Chad Valenti (Glastonbury, Conn.), and senior Mike Rocco (Tewskbury, Mass.) put runners on second and third with a double.

Lanciani settled down after Rocco's double, facing just three batters over the minimum over the final eight innings and retiring eight batters in the row in the late innings.

Loh was equally outstanding, retiring 12 consecutive batters and 19 of 20 in the middle innings.
Chandler and Shephard were both 2-for-4 for the Warriors. Rourke was 2-for-2 and reached base four times, while Rocco went 2-for-4 for the Bulldogs.

Bryant hosts Assumption at 1 p.m. tomorrow.