The wildest game of No. 18 Maryland baseball’s brief season ended in heartbreak for the Terps on Saturday, as they found themselves at the wrong end of a walkoff loss for the first time this spring as No. 7 Vanderbilt took the 8-7 victory after entering the inning down a run.
The Terps fell to 4-6 with their most recent loss, and 0-2 in the Cambria College Classic after back-to-back losses to ranked teams in Ole Miss and Vanderbilt. Nick Dean’s pitching performance was a mixed bag as he gave up the majority of the Commodores’ runs before finishing strong, and hard-fought Maryland hitting, including three home runs, ultimately went to waste in a nail biting loss.
“The margin between winning and losing with two really good teams is a play here or a play there,” Maryland Coach Rob Vaughn said. “It’s my job as a coach to have our guys prepared…I didn’t do a good enough job of that. I thought we played good enough to win today.
They’ve had a brutal go of it through the first two weeks of the season, having the misfortune of playing No. 4 Ole Miss in four of their first nine games. Their 4-5 record heading into Saturday is a result of dropping one or two winnable games, but they had looked largely capable against some of the nation’s best. Their last two games, though, have seen a complete lack of response to the Rebels’ pitching, and their 1-5 Friday night loss saw them only collect five hits to go along with nine men left on base.
Vanderbilt awaited the unlucky Terps the next day, but had at least taken a few blows from the tournament opener to match Maryland. The Commodores lost to Nebraska on Friday in a 3-5 defeat, at one point being up 3-0 before a 13-hit barrage caught up to them. Thanks to a fellow Big Ten school, Vanderbilt’s 6-4 record wasn’t much different than the Terps.
Maryland got off to a great start, with Luke Shliger and Matt Shaw both reaching base to start the afternoon after Shliger capitalized on a fielding error and Shaw drew a walk. A passed ball allowed both to advance a base, placing two Maryland runners in scoring position before any outs were recorded. An RBI groundout off the bat off of Ian Petrutz got the Terps on the board, 1-0 after one inning.
The lead was short lived, though, as Nick Dean’s first pitch of his outing sailed over the left field wall thanks to a leadoff home run from Enrique Bradfield Jr. Dean entered the matchup with a 3.27 ERA, and had only surrendered seven hits over 11 innings pitched over the span of two outings.
Davis Diaz took the advantage later that inning, smacking a double to bring in Jonathan Vastine and bringing RJ Schreck all the way to third. Chris Maldonado’s sacrifice fly brought Shreck aboard soon after, and a Jack Bulger liner gave Diaz a free path home. By the time the dust cleared, Vandy held a 4-1 lead after just one adrenaline-fueled inning.
Hunter Owen made sure Maryland wouldn’t get a rebuttal, striking out the side to send the Terps right back into the field and keep them playing defense.
Vanderbilt got what they wanted, which was Dean still on the mound to continue the second inning. RJ Austin sent another deep shot barely over the left field wall, counting as his first homer of the season and his team’s second in only two innings of action.
The Terps, however, continued squandering their at-bats, making Owen look unstoppable on the mound as he added two more K’s to his mounting total.
Dean finally settled down when it was his turn to pitch. He threw his first 1-2-3 inning of the day in the third, and looked comfortable keeping the Commodores off base.
After loading the bases and somehow leaving all three runners stranded in the fourth inning, Maryland kicked off the fifth dirtying up the base paths with Shliger and Shaw once more both finding their way into scoring position before a Lorusso walk put men on all three bases. The deadly Petrutz batted a runner in with another groundout RBI, and a fielder’s choice off of an Eddie Hacopian blooper added another to bring the game to 5-3.
Looking like the rally may have ended, and down to his last strike, Kevin Keister completely changed the trajectory of the game with a three run jack to retake the lead amidst a wild inning of action. It was his first long ball of the season, and completed a miraculous five run turnaround.
Once again, Vanderbilt wasted no time responding to the Maryland scoring run, with RJ Austin sending a tank well over the right field for the longest hit ball of the day and his second homer of the afternoon. Nick Dean shut down the rest of the lineup for the remainder of the inning, and the game remained tied at six apiece.
Owen became the first starter pulled to start the sixth inning, with Andrew Dutkanych taking his place, and Maryland followed suit soon after, inserting Nigel Belgrave for Dean. The Maryland starter more or less salvaged his outing after a tough first two innings, recording six strikeouts over five innings.
“A lot of the damage they were doing were on sliders and on off-speed pitches, and credit to Nick, he started using the heater a lot more and getting them off balance,” Vaughn said. “He gave us a chance, we just didn’t do quite enough.”
For the third time that afternoon, Maryland seized the lead, this time in dramatic fashion with a no-doubt Lorusso home run to take a 7-6 advantage. This pushed his hit streak to nine straight games, and his third home run of the budding season.
The Terps had one more chance to pad their lead, but barely missed out on several opportunities as Shliger’s outfield hit was caught two feet before the wall and Shaw was called out sliding headfirst into first base.
With the pressure on Vanderbilt in the ninth inning, Coach Vaughn opted to ride Belgrave’s hot hand one last time, who pitched three straight shutout innings to get to that position. The reliever walked the first batter he saw, though, and Maryland’s manager decided 46 pitches was enough. In came Kyle McCoy to take over an unenviable situation.
McCoy instantly relented a bunt for a single, adding another baserunner. Another single loaded the bases for Vandervilt’s first time that day, and a Bradfield single brought in the tying run. A minute later, the pitcher let up a costly fly-out to Schreck, and the winning run made the 90-yard dash from third to walk off the Terps after entering the inning down a run.
Maryland put together some impressive scoring outbursts, notably that explosive fifth inning, but ultimately couldn’t make anything in the last two innings and granted Vanderbilt just enough of a window to survive as late-game pitching management did the Terps in.
“That loss is really on me, to be honest with you,” Vaughn said. “As good as Nigel was, there’s no way I should have sent him back out. He was spent, man. He was just exhausted. It’s not a mistake going to Kyle there, the mistake is not letting Kyle start the inning.”
The Terps will get one more chance to nab a win at the Cambria College Classic tomorrow against Hawaii at 10:30 a.m., right back at U.S. Bank Stadium.
