Sports
Seawolves Baseball Ousted From America East Tournament
Conference frontrunner sees its NCAA hopes vanish after back-to-back losses.
In a double-elimination tournament, particularly with a game as quirky as baseball, there are no foregone conclusions, even if the 2011 America East Conference tournament felt like it would be little more than a victory parade for the Stony Brook University baseball team.
A team that dominated the regular season, losing just twice in 24 games, and recorded a school record 41 wins heading into the tourney was stunned by fourth-seeded Albany, 4-1, on Friday afternoon. The loss, paired with Thursday's 8-1 loss to second-seeded Maine, eliminated Stony Brook from the tournament.
It was an anticlimactic ending to the year and an underwhelming beginning to the Joe Nathan Field era. Stony Brook entered the week with the second-best winning percentage in the country, having gone 41-10 (.804). The Seawolves had just swept a four-game series against Albany to complete the regular season, and followed it up with a rout in the first round of the conference tourney.
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In the championship round between Maine and Albany, the Black Bears used a pair of four-run innings to win 10-1 and capture the conference title. By doing so, they gained an automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament. The 64-team field will be announced on Monday.
Two key pieces to their regular-season run, seniors Chad Marshall and Stephen Marino, have played their final game, and the same may be the case for righthander Nick Tropeano. According to this week's edition of Baseball America, he's expected to be selected in the fifth or sixth round of Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, which is held June 6-8.
