The Massachusetts baseball team struggled against the Connecticut Huskies, falling 12-2 in a midweek clash between New England rivals. The Minutemen (11-22-1, 5-13 Atlantic 10) had a couple bright sparks with Carter Hanson and Marc Willi having successful games, but the group could not stop UConn (22-17, 8-4 Big East) from finishing the job in seven innings.
UMass took the lead early in the first inning with a sacrifice fly by Matt Travisano, scoring Anthony Tirado. The Huskies responded right back with a Rob Rispoli leadoff home run off of starter Ben Thomason.
Besides the one run in the first frame, Thomason put up a solid effort, until he ran into trouble late in the outing. He finished with a line of two and two-thirds innings pitched, three earned runs and two strikeouts. The redshirt freshman started his third straight midweek game, first against Fairfield, the prior week against Sacred Heart and on Tuesday night against UConn.
“When he’s on, he gives us an opportunity,” head coach Matt Reynolds said. “We are going into these games now where we are going to throw multiple guys.”
At the plate, UMass had a couple of players to hang its hat on. Carter Hanson tallied two hits on three at-bats. The senior has improved his batting average in three straight games, with the biggest shift coming in Tuesday’s loss.
“[Hanson’s] really been coming along recently,” Reynolds said. “He had a dip there for a little bit, but he’s been swinging the bat pretty well so that was good to see.”
Hanson currently sits at No. 1 on the Minutemen leaderboard this season in batting average and OPS, as well as No. 2 for runs batted in.
“We really need him to produce offensively,” Reynolds said. “He’s been coming around for us.”
Marc Willi joined Hanson in Tuesday night’s success. His home run represented one of two runs batted in on the night. Willi demolished a rising fastball up in the strike zone and sent it into the seats. The Weston native notched his fourth long ball of the year, which cut the deficit to 4-2.
“The approach at the plate has gotten a lot better,” Reynolds said. “He’s done a good job laying off stuff that’s out of the zone much better than he has in the past.”
Willi was in and out of the lineup last season, but Reynolds highlighted his comfort and confidence late in this year’s campaign.
Besides Willi and Hanson, the rest of the Minutemen lineup struggled putting balls in play. They finished with 11 strikeouts on the day, along with two walks, both from Travisano.
“We struck out double digits again, which has plagued us all season,” Reynolds said. “We need to have better standards on how we play.”
Heading into the bottom of the fifth, UConn led by two runs. Mikey Jensen, who pitched a strong fourth inning, stepped back onto the mound for the fifth. His command started to falter, and the Huskies capitalized. Jensen gave up three blasts in the inning to Ryan Daniels, Beau Root and Sam Biller. The redshirt junior finished with seven earned runs, 10 hits and one strikeout, in two innings pitched.
“We did not play any phase of the game well enough to beat a really good UConn team,” Reynolds said. “They took advantage of their opportunities as well which is why it got lopsided the way it did.”
Despite two strong innings late from Michael Aceto, the Minutemen offense could not crawl back into the game. The Huskies added one in the seventh to make it 12-2, forcing a mercy rule.
UMass has now lost 13 of its last 15 games and will look to change the fortunes of the season next weekend.
“We were playing good baseball for a while there in all aspects, and we’ve not recently,” Reynolds said. “We need to re-establish that and put an entire game together where we don’t beat ourselves … Hopefully we can snap out of that with a few days of practice to get ready for a positive weekend against [George Washington].”
The weekend series against George Washington begins on Friday, April 25 at 3 p.m. in Amherst. The game can be streamed on ESPN+.
Zeke Altman can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @EzekielAltman.
