Mercyhurst stuns Seton Hill with walk-off grand slam in NCAA baseball regional

As gut-wrenching losses go on a 1-to-10 scale, this one was a 10.

“I know the character of our team, but we’ve never experienced a loss like this on this stage in this season,” Seton Hill coach Marc Marizzaldi said Friday, moments after Mercyhurst’s Luke Jackson hit a walk-off grand slam to power the Lakers to an 8-6 victory over the 13th-ranked Griffins in an NCAA Division II Atlantic Region tournament game at SHU Baseball Complex in Greensburg.

“I can tell you what kind of kids they are, but I can’t predict how they’re going to respond,” Marizzaldi said.

Instead of needing just one victory Saturday to clinch a spot in next week’s NCAA Atlantic Super Region tournament, Seton Hill must win three times over the next two days to get to that spot.

The victory advanced Mercyhurst (30-15) into the winners’ bracket, where the Lakers will await the winner of Saturday’s first game, a losers-bracket matchup at 11 a.m. featuring Seton Hill (45-11) and East Stroudsburg (36-13).

“For our team, I don’t think it’s that difficult,” Marizzaldi said. “We have great players, we have some good pitching left and we’ve found ways to win all season. If we look at it like we have to go 3-0, well, we’ve gone 17-0, 14-0, 7-0. We’ve had some streaks this year, so we just have to put together a 3-0 streak, which won’t be easy, but we’re capable of it.”

In other Atlantic Region games Friday, East Stroudsburg eliminated Shippensburg, 20-4, at Seton Hill, and Millersville defeated West Chester, 8-5, at Millersville.

Both regional site winners will advance to the Atlantic Super Region best-of-three series on May 26-27 at a site to be determined. The Atlantic Super regional survivor will move on to the Division II championships from June 3-10 in Cary, N.C.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. We’ve played two incredible teams so far,” Mercyhurst coach Joe Spano said. “I’m beyond pleased at where we are. We’re going to give it everything we have. It’s going to be challenging. We’re in a good position, but it’s going to be really hard.”

Jackson hit Blake Barker’s 0-1 pitch over the left-center field wall to give Mercyhurst its improbable victory after the Lakers fell behind 6-4 when Seton Hill, the designated visiting team for the game, added a run in the top of the ninth on Vincenzo Rauso’s RBI double, scoring Noah Sweeney.

“When I hit it, I definitely knew I put it in the gap,” said Jackson, a junior outfielder from Erie McDowell. “I didn’t know if it was going to go over, but once it went over, I knew it.”

Barker (4-1) has been spectacular as Seton Hill’s closer, but he struggled Friday. While opponents had been hitting just .165 against him, Mercyhurst succeeded in getting to him.

The sophomore left-hander entered the game with a 0.40 ERA with 28 strikeouts in 22 2/3 innings. But after pitching a scoreless eighth inning, he began the ninth by allowing a single to Jack Malec, who was replaced by pinch-runner Casey Smith.

Matt Christopher was hit by a pitch, and Eric Chorba reached on Barker’s throwing error on an attempted sacrifice to load the bases before Jackson ended the game with his blast.

“We caught them playing their best baseball,” Marizzaldi said. “We played them two weeks ago, and they were good. But 1 through 9, they’re putting the bat on the ball right now. They’re hot.”

Mercyhurst outhit Seton Hill, 14-10.

Seton Hill, which was trying to equal a school record for victories in a season, took a 2-0 lead in the first.

Jack Oberdorf’s RBI grounder got through the infield for an error on Lakers third baseman Zachary Kourous, scoring Jack Whalen. Owen Sabol later drove home Oberdorf with a single.

Mercyhurst went in front 3-2 in the second.

Kourous doubled and moved to third when Seton Hill right fielder Max Mandler bobbled the ball, driving in Mitchell Grosch, before Lucas Folmar homered against Seton Hill starter Jon McCullough.

Braden Durham’s two-run homer to left in the fourth sparked a three-run rally that also saw Whalen single home Sweeney to give Seton Hill a 5-3 lead and chase Mercyhurst stater Corbin Foy.

Jacob Bazala, a Norwin product, came on and pitched 4 2/3 innings for Mercyhurst, giving up just two hits and one earned run while striking out eight and walking two. Ben Berdine (3-2) pitched the ninth and was credited with a victory for the Lakers.

Malec’s RBI single in the fourth pulled Mercyhurst within 5-4 and chased McCullough. Caiden Wood relieved and blanked the Lakers over the next 2 2/3 innings before giving way to Barker in the eighth.

“I’m 25 years older than these kids, and I’ve experienced a lot more bad losses than they have,” Marizzaldi said. “It’s my job to help them process it in a way that’s going to help them come back and play hard tomorrow, and that’s it.”

Marizzaldi sat in a vacated dugout as players and fans departed. He fixed his eyes on the field and conceded that the outcome was “a very tough loss to swallow.”

“There’s some tears in their eyes,” he said of his players. “I need to help them process that emotion behind that loss. I just said that (Mercyhurst) had eight runs and we had six, and that’s the only possible way you can look at it. If you look at it as, ‘Oh, we got walked-off, they hit a grand slam,’ all that, it’s going to hurt a lot more. If we’re going to come back and play (on Saturday), we have to look at this as a loss, just like the other 10 we had this year.”