Highlights

NEWARK, NJ—Trailing 4-0, NJIT scored eight times in the bottom of the seventh inning, sending 11 men to the plate in the frame, and then held on for an 8-6 win over visiting USC Upstate Saturday afternoon to clinch the Highlanders' first-ever Atlantic Sun Conference baseball series.
 
Unanimously picked to finish last in the eight-team A-Sun in the preseason coaches' poll, NJIT in its first season as a member of the conference that ranked 12th among the 32 Division I conferences last season in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), debuted in the A-Sun with a 4-2 victory over Upstate on Friday night and followed that with Saturday's 8-6 triumph.
 
The teams are scheduled to wrap up the three-game series with a single game on Sunday, slated for a noon start at Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium.
 
The Highlanders are 11-15 overall to go with their 2-0 mark in the Atlantic Sun. USC Upstate, which had won five in a row before coming to Newark, is 13-14 overall and 0-2 in the A-Sun.
 
Saturday's game was scoreless through six innings, but Upstate broke out for four runs in the top of the seventh inning against NJIT's top reliever, Tommy Derer, in a frame that featured two home runs by the visitors.
 
Derer, who came in with a team-best 2.28 earned run average and had held the opposition without an earned run in seven of his previous eight relief appearances, went from pitcher of record on the losing side to winning pitcher when the Highlanders responded to the 4-run deficit with an 8-run bottom of the seventh inning. His won-lost record is now 2-1.
 
John Saviano finished off the win, pitching the last two innings and allowing 4 hits and 2 runs (one earned) the rest of the way.
 
Derer and Saviano followed starter, sophomore RHP Johnny Malatesta, who pitched 5.2 innings and allowed 3 hits without a run.
 
USC Upstate used four pitchers and the first three gave up at least two runs apiece. Starter Tyler Jackson did not figure in the decision, but pitched 6.1 innings, allowing 9 hits and 3 runs, while striking out 6.
 
The loss went to reliever Elijah Willingham (0-2), who was charged with two runs without recording an out. Richie Lacell, who has all five of the Spartans' saves this season, relieved Willingham and was tagged for 3 runs in two-thirds of an inning. Only junior RHP Jordan Miller, who retired the Highlanders 1-2-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning, was unblemished in the runs column among the four Upstate pitchers in Saturday's game.
 
Although the first six innings were a scoreless pitchers' duel between the starting pitchers, Malatesta of NJIT and Jackson of USC Upstate, the 14 runs scored by the two teams over the last two-and-a-half innings resulted in some good hitting numbers by game's end.
 
SS Justin Etts, DH Stephan Halibej, 1B Bryan Haberstroh, RF Michael Anastasia, and 3B Tom Brady all had two hits apiece for the winning Highlanders. C Cody Kramer had just one hit, but it was a big 3-run homer in NJIT's 8-run explosion in the seventh inning.
 
For USC Upstate, RF James Fowlkes was 3-for-4, plus a walk, with a run scored and an RBI. He is 6-for-8 in the series through two games.
 
1B Jake Beaver and 3B Hunter Gilbert added two hits for the Spartans and one of Beaver's hits was a home run, while 2B Devon Ortiz (1-for-4) added a two-run homer and scored two runs.
 
The Spartans broke the 0-0 tie when Beaver led off the seventh inning with a home run over the fence just inside the right field foul pole.
 
At that point, NJIT, which had been errorless in the series opener and continued to field well through the first six innings of Game Two, hit a bad defensive patch. After a walk to CF Cody Brittain, Gilbert put down a bunt single and Brittain, who went to second base on the bunt, alertly went on to third base when he saw the bag uncovered and then scored when home, too, was uncovered, as the Highlanders reacted too slowly the unfolding scenarios as the play developed.
 
After Derer got the second out, Ortiz delivered what frequently would have become the coup de grace when he hit a two-run shot over the left field fence to give Upstate a 4-0 lead.
 
Undeterred, NJIT, which hadn't scored more than four runs in an inning through the first 25 games, responded to its rough seventh inning in the field by exploding for a season-best eight runs in the bottom of the frame.
 
Two freshmen, Anastasia and Brady, opening the inning with singles and after an out, CF Jesse Uttendorfer doubled to score Anastasia with NJIT's first run.
 
That knocked the Spartan starter, Jackson, out of the game, bringing on Willingham, who was greeted by another freshman, Etts, who hit a two-run single. His two RBI on Saturday give him six in the last three games and he is 9-for-17 in the last four games, including two doubles and a triple.
 
The big inning continued for NJIT when LF Evan Pietronico walked, bringing on Lacell, the Spartan closer. After an out, Kramer hit a 3-run shot over the left field fence, his second four-bagger of the season for the Highlanders.
 
Haberstroh then singled and Anastasia walked, bringing up Brady, who hit a two-run double to make the score 8-4 in favor of the Highlanders.
 
Haberstroh, a junior, batted .287 with a team-leading 15 doubles, plus 6 homers and 29 RBI as a sophomore. But he entered this week struggling with a .155 average. However, he was 3-for-5 in a mid-week win at Saint Peter's and is 3-for-8 in the first two games of the A-Sun series vs. Upstate.
 
Upstate scored one run in each of the last two innings, including an unearned run in the ninth, but it was not enough for the Spartans to avoid their second loss of the weekend series at NJIT.