Box score
SOUTH ORANGE, NJ—Host Seton Hall blanked NJIT, 7-0, on the opening day of the 2009 Rawlings Strike Out Cancer Tournament Friday afternoon at Owen T. Carroll Field on the Seton Hall campus.
The four-team tournament will continue with single games for each team on Saturday and Sunday. The Highlanders will face Iona on Saturday at 10 am and Northeastern on Sunday at 10 am. Northeastern beat Iona, 7-2, in Friday's opening game.
Seton Hall (5-5) won for the third time in its last four starts, defeating NJIT behind the strong pitching of junior RHP Sean Black (2-1), who tossed a four-hit shutout over the first eight innings. Freshman RHP Henry Warner closed out the win with a perfect ninth inning for the Pirates.
The starting and losing pitcher for NJIT was LHP Matt Melody (0-2). Slowed by injury during preseason, Melody was hit hard in his first outing at West Virginia and did not get out of the third inning against the Mountaineers.
On Friday, Melody was not where he wants to be. But he was much more effective than the first time out. He limited Seton Hall to four runs through the first four innings before running into more serious trouble in a three-run fifth inning. Melody's line was: 6 innings, 5 hits, 7 runs, 3 walks and 3 strikeouts. Junior RHP Chris Parenti pitched two innings of scoreless relief for the Highlanders.
Seton Hall's junior 3B, Chris Fontenelli was the batting star, going 2-for-3 with a pair of doubles and a sacrifice fly and three runs batted in. Senior DH Chris Affinito drove in two runs for the Pirates and finished 1-for-3.
The Pirates did a good job of situational hitting, generating productive outs that saw three of the team's seven runs cross the plate on infield ground outs and a fourth run come home on a sacrifice fly. Seton Hall left just four on base in the game.
The Highlanders got four hits, led by senior tri-captain Thomas Farina, who was 2-for-3, including a fifth-inning double. NJIT's middle infield combo of senior 2B Craig Binkiewicz and freshman SS Vincent Del Vecchio each singled to account for the Highlanders' other base hits.
Seton Hall gave Black all the support he needed by scoring twice in the bottom of the first inning. SS AJ Rusbarsky led off with a walk and Fontenelli followed with a double to right field that advanced Rusbarsky to third. NJIT's Melody got the next three batters to ground out, but the first two pushed a run across the plate.
Fontenelli drove home the third run with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the third. Affinito later led off the fourth with a double and scored on a single by the next batter, LF Chris Spagnuolo.
SHU got its final three runs on two hits, keyed by Fontenelli's second double of the day, a shot to right center that brought home two runs. He later scored on another infield out.
The Highlanders, who had three walks to go with their four hits, had just one inning with two baserunners and that ended with a two-out pickoff. With one out in the second inning freshman C Brian Bleakley walked and went to second on Del Vecchio's single. However, the next man flied out to center field and then the inning ended with the pickoff play.
The clean game that saw no errors by either team and a combined nine men left on base, was completed in a tidy 2:15.
NJIT is still looking for its first win, having played all six games so far against teams from the rugged Big East Conference. Friday's opponent, Seton Hall, was a 31-win team last season, including 16-9 in the Big East, which was good for fifth place.
This season, the Pirates opened by taking two out of three from Big Ten foes, defeating Michigan State and Minnesota, before losing to Penn State. Next, they lost three in a row to the nation's second-ranked team, North Carolina, and then took two of three in Richmond, Virginia, splitting with Richmond and then beating Virginia Commonwealth in a single game.
The Highlanders would have played their first nine against Big East teams, but they were rained out of an opening series vs. Pitt that was to have been played in North Carolina. Instead they opened with four losses at West Virginia, lost a single game Wednesday at Rutgers and then fell at Seton Hall on Friday. NJIT does not have any games remaining against Big East opponents.
