Gulls to Meet St. Joseph’s in NCAA Tournament Opener

BEVERLY, Mass. – The Endicott baseball team has been seeded as the #3 team in the 2013 NCAA Division III tournament New England Regional and will face #6 St. Joseph's (Maine) on Wednesday, May 15^th at 4:30 pm at Whitehouse Field in Harwich, Mass.

Endicott (32-12) earned the Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) automatic qualifier by virtue of their CCC championship title, their first since 2005-06 when they were last in the NCAA tournament.

St. Joseph's (30-12) were the champions of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) and is making their fourth consecutive and seventh all-time appearance in the NCAA New England Regional.

The Gulls and Monks met earlier this year in Beverly, with Endicott earning a 4-2 victory on March 27^th.

All-time St. Joseph's has the edge, winning 9 of the 14 meetings between the two programs. The Monks are led this season by GNAC Pitcher of the Year and First Team All-Conference honoree Tyler Laverriere (Biddeford, Maine), who posted a 5-2 record with a 0.97 ERA.

Senior pitcher Chad Rafferty (Keene, N.H.), senior first baseman Mike Pratt (Dartmouth, Mass.), junior outfielder Alex Lorenc (Nanuet, N.Y.) and sophomore catcher Joe Coyne (Duxbury, Mass.) all joined Laverriere on the First Team. As a team, the Monks hit .299, while Endicott is batting .322 for the season.

The Gulls will counter with their own Pitcher of the Year in Tyler Hitchcock (Abington, Mass.), who was 8-1 on the year with an ERA of 1.65. Hitchcock pitched seven and a third innings in the two team's earlier meeting, allowing just one earned run on five hits. Kevin Dupras (Belchertown, Mass.) earned the first of seven saves this year in the game.

Rafferty pitched seven innings and allowed four runs on nine hits in falling to 2-1 on the year in that game, with Laverriere coming on for the final inning of work for the Monks.

The Gulls came back from a 2-1 deficit with three runs in the fourth on a two-run triple by Eric Lemke (Southington, Conn.) and an RBI single by Ralph Fidaleo (Fairfield, Conn.).

Endicott is making their fifth trip to the NCAA tournament, after earning the trip in 2000, 2003, 2004 and 2006. They are 1-8 in NCAA tournament games, collecting their only victory in 2004 with a 12-10 win over Amherst.