After an up-and-down regular season, the baseball team traveled north to Maine for the NESCAC Tournament riding a six-game winning streak and playing its best baseball of the spring. Unfortunately for the Jumbos, their best was not good enough to get past Middlebury, which beat Tufts twice, shattering its NCAA Tournament hopes and ending its season.
"I think we probably needed to beat Middlebury one more time and at least get to that last game [of the NESCAC Tournament] to really give ourselves a shot [at an at-large bid]," senior pitcher Zak Smotherman said. "Coming into it I thought we pretty much needed to win the tournament, but we played two of our best games of the season."
Middlebury earned its first-ever conference championship and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, and although Tufts knocked Bowdoin out of the Tournament last Sunday morning in the losers' bracket final, the regular-season NESCAC East champion Polar Bears got the at-large selection over the Jumbos.
"We went into [the tournament] thinking we weren't going to get an at-large; I guess we ended up pretty close," junior tri-captain Ben Simon said. "I don't think we really wanted an at-large - we wanted to win the thing."
The league tourney brought moments and challenges to the Jumbos that no one could have predicted. After recovering from an embarrassing 14-1 opening game loss to Middlebury to defeat Williams and Bowdoin, Tufts found itself needing two wins on Sunday afternoon to steal the conference championship and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The foe was familiar: Middlebury, winners of its first five matchups with Tufts of 2006. The Panthers, undefeated in the tournament, needed only one win to oust Tufts and win the NESCAC.
The upset proved too tall an order for Tufts, as the Jumbos dropped their sixth and final contest with Middlebury, 8-1. Tufts senior righty Carlos Lopez kept his team in the game early, getting out of jams to allow only two runs in two-and-two-thirds innings of work before he was pulled for sophomore reliever Jason Protano, working in his second contest of the day.
Middlebury proved too much for Protano, plating six runs in his three innings of work. A two-run home run by Panther sophomore third baseman John Lanahan opened the floodgates in the fourth inning, and Middlebury piled on four more runs in the sixth. Tufts senior southpaw Erik Johanson held Middlebury scoreless through the final two-plus innings, but the damage had already been done.
Tufts got its only offense of the game in the third inning, where freshman right fielder Brian McDonough doubled in senior centerfielder Jim O'Leary. Otherwise, Panther sophomore pitcher Jack Britton was brilliant, allowing only six hits and striking out 11 on no days' rest for the complete game win.
"[Middlebury] hit the ball well," said senior pitcher Zak Smotherman, who started for Tufts against Middlebury in the first game of the tournament. "They seem to hit our strength pretty well, they really sat back and hit the outside fastball pretty well, and we weren't able to consistently pitch inside against them. [Britton] was impressive. I think had we gotten to the bullpen we could have had some success."
On any other day, Tufts' first game on Saturday would have been the big story: Smotherman held a no-hitter for eight innings in an elimination game agaist Bowdoin. The Polar Bears resorted to what many would consider a "bush league" maneuver when centerfielder Jared Lemieux bunted for a single to break up the no-hitter. The bunt sparked two runs off of Smotherman, but Protano put out the fire and got the final two outs, giving Tufts a 6-2 win.
For Smotherman, it was just a matter of good pitching and good defense all coming together.
"I didn't really feel different," Smotherman said. "I was just throwing the ball well, and the defense was just playing well behind me."
Simon was among those who were unhappy with how the no-hitter ended.
"I was definitely disappointed [that Lemieux bunted for a hit]," Simon said. "A kid that has had as good a year as Lemieux did, I would think that he would have more pride in trying to get a hit.
"[But] it doesn't surprise me that he did that," Simon continued. "It's a rivalry. The kids on the other bench have their pride too. They did not want to be no-hit. People think differently in baseball. Some people would say that's a bush league move; other people would say that's a great play."
"I would prefer to give up a hard single [rather than a bunt]," Smotherman said. "At that point it wasn't a big deal. It was more important that we moved on in the tournament."
The Jumbo offense was spread out evenly, as six different players scored one run each, led by two each from O'Leary, junior leftfielder Kyle Backstrom, and senior tri-captain Greg Chertok. Six different players had one RBI each in the win.
Smotherman said the combination of the postseason atmosphere and playing with a late lead - the Jumbos put up three more runs in the seventh to lead 6-0 - helped take his mind off throwing a no-hitter.
"Once we got those extra runs, it felt good that we were going to move on," Smotherman said. "I just sort of went out there and threw."
Tufts kept its tournament hopes alive in Saturday's second game with an 8-0 defeat of Williams in an elimination game for both teams. Pitching was again the story for Tufts, as Simon spun a complete-game shutout, allowing only six hits and striking out two. The Jumbos jumped out to an early lead, scoring once in the first two innings and adding two insurance runs in the fourth, another three in the seventh, and one more in the eighth.
Junior tri-captain Bryan McDavitt had a breakout game offensively, going 5-for-5 with two RBI and four runs scored. Junior centerfielder Chris Decembrele and freshman right fielder Brian McDonough each added two hits and two RBI of their own.
Friday afternoon's opener against Middlebury was suspended in the third inning with the Panthers ahead, 3-0. Due to the weather at Bowdoin that was a part of the mammoth rainstorm that swept New England last week, the game was pushed back to Saturday morning and moved to Colby.
The Jumbos could not break the Panthers' momentum when the game resumed, and Middlebury had exploded for a whopping 14 runs on 21 hits when the dust had settled. Sophomore Adam Telian and junior Derek Rice each worked three innings, with Telian surrendering seven runs in the fifth and Rice allowing four more in the seventh for the final margin. Tufts scored its lone run in the top of the fifth when junior second baseman Brian Casey, who reached base on a single, scored on a wild pitch.
Tufts ends its season with a 24-14 overall record and a 9-3 mark in the NESCAC East. Six of the Jumbos' 14 losses of 2005 came at the hands of Middlebury. Despite falling short of the NCAA Tournament, team members walked away from the season on a positive note.
"I think too many people put too much emphasis on the NCAA Tournament as a goal for the year," Simon said. "I think we had a very good season; I was very proud to be on the baseball team this past weekend. We came back from losing the first game to knock two teams out."
