By Ethan Basch
Coming into Friday, the Huskies were one of the hottest teams in the country winning 9 of their last ten games and outscoring opponents by a total of 75 runs to 28 runs in those wins. They stayed hot Friday night by blanking the Georgetown Bulldogs with a score of 10-0 in their first of four games against them this weekend.
To start off the series, the Huskies turned to their ace, Ben Casparius, who went seven shutout innings while recording 15 strikeouts and allowing just five hits and one walk. He had all of his pitches working Friday night, including his changeup, which Coach Jim Penders said is “the best right-handed changeup that we’ve ever had in our program.”
After both teams went quiet in the first inning, the Huskies came up to bat in the second inning, and the first two hitters up recorded outs. Despite having two outs, UConn scored two runs using a Kevin Ferrer double, a Chris Winkel hit by the pitch, a Chris Brown RBI single and a home plate steal from Winkel.
Those two runs would be all that Casparius needed.
Georgetown’s best opportunity to score was in the top of the third after the Bulldog’s loaded the bases with one out. Casparius had a big strikeout followed by a ground out to second to end the threat.
The Huskies were able to tack on two runs in the third and fifth innings with the help of a Christian Fedko sac fly, another Ferrer base hit, a Fedko double and Ferrer’s third hit of the night — an RBI single to left-center field.
Meanwhile, Casparius was dominating and at one point retired eight straight Bulldogs. He ended the game retiring 14 out of 15.
UConn was able to add even more insurance in the sixth inning by scoring on two RBI singles by the Fedko brothers and an RBI groundout by Reggie Crawford.
The mercy rule for college baseball requires a team to be up by 10 runs after seven innings or six and a half innings if the home team is ahead. The Huskies were able to put this rule into effect after a Winkel blast sent everyone home for the night giving the Huskies a 10-0 win.
Overall, it was a combined effort from the Husky hitters as eight out of nine Huskies were able to record hits in this dominant win, with three Huskies having multi-hit games.
Even with all of those hits, the way the Huskies were hitting the ball the entire night, Penders said, “we could have had a lot more hits.”