Box score

SOUTH ORANGE, NJ—Maine scored a two-out unearned run in the bottom of the 11th inning Friday to defeat NJIT, 3-2, on the first day of the annual Strike Out Cancer Tournament hosted by Seton Hall.
 
Maine, the defending America East Conference baseball champion and a participant in the 2011 NCAA Tournament, scored twice in the first inning and then went scoreless for the next nine innings until breaking through with the winning run.
 
The Black Bears, who played all of their previous 2012 games in South Carolina and Florida, are 6-8 after slipping past NJIT.
 
The Highlanders, who outhit Maine, 8-6, got single runs in the first and third innings, but could not push across a run after that. NJIT, which played north of Delaware for the first time in 2012, is 4-7 after Friday's close loss.
 
Each team got strong starting pitching and used just one reliever. For NJIT, junior LHP Tripp Davis went the first eight innings, allowing just four hits, three of which came in Maine's two-run bottom if the first inning. Davis struck out six and walked three.
 
He was relieved by classmate DJ Roche, who had started the game in right field. Roche who came on to begin the bottom of the ninth inning took the loss, bringing his season record to 2-2 after allowing two hits and the one unearned run in 2.2 innings. He struck out one and walked three.
 
Maine's junior RHP Steve Perakslis started and went eight full innings, allowing seven hits and four walks, with the two runs and six strikeouts. Sophomore RHP Mike Connolly (1-2) took the mound in the top of the ninth and earned the win with three innings of one-hit shutout relief. He struck out three.
 
Three different Highlanders collected two hits apiece, as freshman 2B Mike Rampone (2-for-4) doubled to lead off the game and later scored on a double by senior LF James D'Aloia (1-for-4).
 
Sophomore SS Matt Weckerle was also 2-for-4 and his single drove in freshman CF Ed Charlton with NJIT's second and tying run in the top of the third. C Bryan Bleakley went 2-for-5 for NJIT, but he did not figure in the scoring. The first-inning doubles for Rampone and D'Aloia were the only extra-base hits for either team.
 
Maine got six singles from six different players, including senior 1B Justin Leisenheimer, a 2011 all-America East honoree, whose two-out single was the game-winner in the 11th inning.
 
Sophomore 3B Alex Calbick, a 2011 Louisville Slugger Freshman All-American, had an RBI single for Maine in the first inning, as did junior C Tyler Patzalek.
 
NJIT got on the board first, as Rampone opened the game with a double to left field, went to third on a bunt and then came in on D'Aloia's double down the right field line. The chances of a bigger inning were hurt when D'Aloia was thrown out trying to stretch his double into a triple and then Perakslis got a strikeout to end the frame.
 
Maine equalized quickly in the bottom of the first, when, after an out to begin, SS Michael Fransoso, named to the 2011 all-Chapel Hill Regional team in the NCAAs, walked and stole second ahead of Patzalek's run-scoring single. Patzalek then reached third on a throwing error that was part of the play when Sam Belzano dropped down a bunt single for Maine. Calbick's single then made it 2-1 for Maine before NJIT's Davis induced a double-play ground out to head off any more damage.
 
After a scoreless second inning, Charlton led off the third with a walk for the Highlanders and, after one out, stole second base for his third steal of the year. Weckerle followed with a hit to center field, bringing home Charlton home with what would be the last scoring for either side until the 11th inning.
 
NJIT left two men on base in the fourth inning and the Highlanders loaded the bases with one out in the top of the eighth, but the threat ended when Maine's Perakslis coaxed a double play ball on his final pitch of the day.
 
Meanwhile, Davis, an all-Great West Conference honoree for NJIT in 2011, registered zeros for his last seven innings on the mound, tossing 1-2-3 frames in the second, third, fourth, and seventh innings. Davis allowed a walk in the fifth, but picked off that runner, and then a leadoff walk in the sixth, but he stranded that runner on second base. Maine's only hit off of Davis after the opening frame was a leadoff single by RF Brian Doran in the eighth, but he was caught stealing for the second out.
 
NJIT's best scoring chance in extra innings came in the 10th, when Charlton was hit by a pitch leading off. He eventually made his way to third base, where he was left on a two-out ground out.
 
Pitching his third inning of relief, Roche, who was an all-Great West utility player in 2011, retired the first two batters he faced in the 11th inning. Then Patzalek and Nick Bernardo walked back-to-back. Calbick's ground ball to shortstop went for an error, extending the inning and loading the bases for Leisenheimer, who singled through the right side of the infield for the walk-off victory.
 
NJIT coach Mike Cole and Maine coach Steve Trimper have ties that go back to when Cole was a high school senior. Trimper was the Vermont assistant coach who recruited Cole to play at the school where he would become a Hall of Famer player. And Trimper, as a head coach, later hired Cole to be his assistant, first at Manhattan and then at Maine, where Cole coached in 2010 before being selected as head coach at NJIT ahead of the 2011 season.
 
The Highlanders will have Saturday off before playing one game on Sunday, as they take on host Seton Hall in a 2 pm game on Owen T. Carroll Field on the final day of the Strike Out Cancer Tournament. Seton Hall, like Maine, played in the 2011 NCAA Tournament. The Pirates made the regionals as an automatic qualifier for having captured the Big East postseason tournament.