Terps Baseball unable to recover from Delaware’s sixth inning, fall 12-7

By Megan Smedley

The Maryland Baseball team took a quick trip up I-95 for a Tuesday afternoon game against the University of Delaware. Freshman right-handed pitcher John Murphy made his Terps debut on the mound while AJ Lee made his Terps debut at second base. Junior transfer Madison Nickens got the Terps out to an early lead with a two-run shot in the top of the first, scoring Kevin Smith. Murphy headed out to the mound for his collegiate debut. He went to high school with Mike Shawaryn at Gloucester Catholic in southern New Jersey. Murphy nabbed a quick first two outs before Delaware tied up the game with a two-run shot.

Marty Costes earned his first collegiate hit and RBI in the second, sending Biondic in to score and putting Maryland back in the lead. In the top of the third, third baseman Andrew Bechtold slung a double down the left field line, scoring Nick Dunn. Murphy remained strong on the mound until he ran into trouble in the fifth inning allowing Delaware to regain the lead 5-4. Jared Price relieved Murphy trying to limit the damage. Murphy’s final line for his collegiate debut is 4.2 innings allowing five runs on six hits. He struck out three batters. Price was quickly replaced by Zach Guth who luckily got out of the bases loaded jam.

Delaware blew the game open in the sixth inning with multiple doubles, extending their lead to 10-4. Maryland started chipping away in the seventh. AJ Lee drove a double down the left field line to score Biondic. Nickens singled to score Costes and Dunn drove a single to run to cut the deficit to 10-7. Delaware clocked on a couple of more runs off of Andrew Miller to extend their lead to 12-7, where it would stay for the rest of the game.

Top players of the game for Maryland were Kevin Biondic who went 3-4, scoring two runs and Nick Dunn going 4-5 with an RBI. Maryland falls to 3-4 on season unable to move past 500 for the year. The team travels to Greenville, North Carolina for a weekend tournament. They will play against Tennessee, Southeastern Louisiana and East Carolina.