Maryland baseball was 5-1 at home coming into Saturday’s game against Bryant. The Terps were riding high from a 14-3 blowout of the Bulldogs in Friday’s weekend series opener.
Freshman Nick Dean took the mound for the Terps in his second home start, looking to continue a string of a few decent pitching performances in a row.
With a three-run cushion after the first inning, Dean and the Terps secured a series win with an 8-3 victory over Bryant on Saturday afternoon.
It started with the bats, specifically freshman Bobby Zmarzlak, who hit two home runs and drove in seven in the series opener. He opened the scoring on Saturday with an RBI double that scored Randy Bednar.
Two straight RBI singles from Matt Orlando and Ben Cowles put Maryland in front 3-0. Dean took over from there, throwing six scoreless innings on 101 pitches. He encountered trouble, walking five during his outing, but ended up striking out six.
On offense, seven different Terps drove in runs, including Randy Bednar, who extended his team-leading RBI total to 14 on the season on a two-run double that hit the left-center field wall on the bounce in the fifth inning.
Maryland had another three-run inning in the fifth as Maxwell Costes drove in the other run on an RBI sacrifice fly.
Bednar led the team at the plate, going 3-for-5 with three runs scored, two RBI and the fifth-inning double. Three other Terps had multi-hit games and one more, catcher Brenton Davis, had a multi-run scoring game.
Davis had his first Maryland start on Saturday and quickly introduced himself to the team, hitting a solo home run down the right field line in the seventh to put the Terps ahead 8-3.
Things got dicey in the top-half of the inning as freshman left-hander Ryan Ramsey gave up three earned runs without recording an out as Bryant closed the gap to 7-3.
After Ramsey was pulled, senior right-handed reliever Elliot Zoellner came in to limit the damage, which he did well, not allowing a run in his three-inning relief appearance. Zoellner ended up with six strikeouts as well, walking two on 53 pitches to get the save as Dean recorded his first collegiate win after his performance on the mound.
Bryant had a minute chance in the 9th as the Bulldogs loaded the bases off of two walks and a single with two outs. Zoellner looked like he had lost the inning and had lost control on the mound.
Third baseman Nick Viscariello worked a 3-1 count on Zoellner and was ready to produce some run-scoring at-bat for Bryant. However, on the next pitch, he check swung and hit a weak line drive to Maryland second baseman Austin Chavis, who tossed it to shortstop Ben Cowles and onto Costes at first for the 4-6-3 game-ending double play.
Maryland has a chance to pull off the series sweep on Sunday with redshirt freshman Sean Burke on the mound.
