It looked as if the streak were over.

The Massachusetts baseball team had a 5-1 lead going into the bottom of the seventh inning, and thought that their run support would be enough to hold off a surging Holy Cross team that had won three of its past four games.

The Minutemen had a streak of their own to break. UMass had suffered four straight defeats, with three of them coming by one run.

But another early lead was not enough for the Minutemen (6-14), as Holy Cross (9-14) erased an impressive start by UMass with five unanswered runs ‘- including a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth, as the Crusaders went on to defeat the Minutemen, 6-5, Tuesday afternoon.

‘It was terrible, we were cruising along but we let them hang around, and we didn’t cash in on any opportunities with the bases loaded. We didn’t deliver, and that came back to haunt us,’ UMass coach Mike Stone said.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Eric Oxford led off and took the third pitch from Mike Gedman to right field to win the game for HC, as the Minutemen dropped its ninth one-run game of the season.

Holy Cross stormed back from a 5-1 deficit in the later innings, setting up Oxford‘s heroics. Three runs in the seventh inning and another in the eighth for the Crusaders tied the game at 6.

UMass scored two runs in the top of the seventh, but ran into trouble in the bottom half of the inning. Jake Gorman and Chris Sintetos both singled, while Billy Cupelo was hit by a pitch to load the bases for HC.

A fielder’s choice ground ball to second by Brendan McCrea brought Gorman home while Cupelo scored on an error, and Oxford later knocked in McCrea to cut the deficit to one.

‘There are some plays that should’ve been made out there defensively, especially when Mitchell Eilenberg was pitching, that needed to be made that weren’t,’ Stone said.

‘We need to have a better cushion.’

With just one hit and no runs in the top of the eighth inning by the Minutemen, the Crusaders tied the game in the bottom of the inning on a single by McCrea that brought in the pinch runner, Chris Blanchard.

Again, with a runner on third with one out in the top of the ninth, UMass was not able to generate scoring in the later part of the game.

‘We had chances in the eighth inning, as a team, we could’ve blown them out. We had opportunities, and we didn’t deliver,’ Stone said.

‘We haven’t made the routine play or executed the pitch or driven someone in, and when you don’t do those things at the end of the game, you’re vulnerable at the end of the game to lose,’ Stone said.

After a scoreless first inning, UMass scored twice in the top of the second, when senior third baseman Jim Macdonald led off the inning with a single through the left side and was followed by a double to the left field corner by junior left fielder Mike Gedman. With runners on second and third with no outs, freshman backstop Tom Conley took an 0-1 pitch to right for a single, scoring Macdonald while sophomore first baseman Peter Copa followed with a sacrifice fly that brought in Gedman.

But HC was not fazed, cutting their deficit in half with a two-out left field homerun by Matt Perry in the bottom of the fifth inning.

In the top of the sixth, Macdonald hit a two-out single to center field while Gedman followed suit with an RBI triple over centerfielder McCrea’s head to give the Minutemen a two-run cushion once again.

The team will be back in action later this week in its home series opener against Temple, April 3-5.

The Owls are coming off a 14-10 defeat of Villanova Tuesday afternoon in the Liberty Bell Classic after winning three straight games against La Salle.

For Stone’s team, however, in order to generate offense in the second stages of games, they will have to go back to the drawing board to be successful against the Owls.

‘Were going back to fundamentals and basics, because we aren’t good enough now,’ Stone said.

David Brinch can be reached at dbrinch@student.umass.edu.