The Massachusetts baseball team fell, 6-5, Saturday in the second game of the three-game series with St. Bonaventure despite a valiant comeback effort in the bottom of the ninth that forced extra innings.

With two outs, Marcus Fry on first and Justin Voghel on second, Logan Greene smacked a three-run home run out of Earl Lorden Field to tie the game 5-5 after UMass went scoreless for seven consecutive innings.

After their last run was plated in the third, Brandon Henshaw sat on second in the top of the 12th after doubling to center field before Jeff Palczewski punched a single to the outfield, bringing Henshaw in for the Bonnies’ game-winning run.

“This was a disappointing one for us,” coach Matt Reynolds said. “Especially after getting that huge hit from Logan, to not be able to pull that one off, we just made too many mistakes.

“As bad as we played in the first three innings, and as mediocre as we played in the middle innings, we still had a chance to win the baseball game,” Reynolds added. “I thought we were going to win the baseball game, not that we deserved to but it was there for the taking and we just couldn’t get it today.”

UMass tallied nine hits in the loss and left 16 players on base through 12 innings. Reynolds was particularly frustrated with the amount of scoring chances the Minutemen had, continuously leaving one to two runners on base each inning.

“We had so many opportunities, there must’ve been three or four innings where it was two outs, nobody on and then they just gave us two base runners. Cooper (Mrowka) walked four times today,” Reynolds said. “We had guys on, we just couldn’t (bring them in), other than Greene, leaving 16 on that’s a big number so hopefully we can bounce back from that tomorrow and just take the series.”

After trailing 3-0 heading into the bottom of the second inning, Connor Smith hit his first home run of the season with a full count to put UMass on the board.

Voghel then singled to left field and Fry doubled to center field to put runners on second and third for Greene. Greene grounded out to the shortstop, bringing in Voghel to make it 3-2. For UMass, this would count as the last run scored before the bottom of the ninth.

At the top of the third with two outs, a runner on second that was walked and advanced on a wild pitch, the Bonnies hit a one-run single to left field before smashing a double and bringing in another on a sloppy throw to home to go up 5-2.

“We kind of slept walked through the first two innings, we didn’t get the start we needed,” Reynolds said. “I thought after that bad start, collectively as a team we weren’t doing well. It wasn’t just our starters, it was our defense, we made five errors today and were not in it for the first couple of innings.

“After that we woke up and started to press a little bit and I think that was kind of the reason why we didn’t have many hits through the majority of the game.”

Greene credited the loss to the Minutemen’s slow start as well.

“We just got to be after it right from the beginning, we played sloppy in the first two, three innings so we have to get it right off the rip,” Greene said. “We have to come out tomorrow, take the series and put this behind us.”

The first pitch for Sunday’s series finale is scheduled for noon at Earl Lorden Field.

“We’ve got to get back to playing clean and get the energy back that we’ve had for most of the year,” Reynolds said. “For some reason that wasn’t quite there today.”

Mollie Walker can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @MWalker2019.