Huskies in the NCAAs: What you need to know
The UConn baseball team begins play in the College Park Regional in Maryland on Friday at 1 p.m. (ESPNU). Here’s what you need to know about the Huskies’ fourth straight trip to NCAA regional play:
How they got there: The Huskies earned an automatic bid by winning their second straight Big East tournament out in Mason, Ohio. Turns out, UConn may have needed to win the Big East in order to make the NCAA’s. After getting swept at Georgetown in a three-game series to end their regular season, the Huskies (with a strength-of-schedule in the high-100’s) needed a strong run in the conference tournament. They beat Georgetown, Creighton and Xavier on consecutive days, by a combined score of 18-3, to do just that.
Who they’re playing: UConn (46-13) is the No. 3 seed in the College Park Regional and will play No. 2 seed Wake Forest (40-17-1) to begin the double-elimination tournament at Bob Smith Stadium. Tickets to the game are still available.
No. 1-seed Maryland faces No. 4 seed Long Island on Friday at 7 p.m. That game is already sold-out.
Win or lose, UConn will play again on Saturday and continue until it loses twice or reaches the finals on Sunday at 7 p.m. If the team out of the loser’s bracket wins on Sunday night, another game to determine the champion would be played Monday at 7 p.m.
Starting off: UConn will go with ace Austin Peterson against Wake Forest. The 6-foot-6, 234-pound righthander from Indiana went 10-2 with a 3.22 ERA and 129 strikeouts in 100.2 innings pitched this season. He was recently named a Second Team All-American.
Scouting the Demon Deacons: UConn coach Jim Penders goes back a long way with Wake Forest coach Tom Walter, since Walter was a senior catcher at Georgetown and Penders a freshman catcher at UConn.
Rhett Lowder (11-3, 2.61 ERA) is the ace of the Demon Deacon’s staff, while Brendan Tinsman (.349, 23 HR, 65 RBI) is the big bat.
“They’re a very quality opponent,” Penders said. “We’re going to be up against a really top-notch program.”
Local ties: Penders noted that UConn has bumped up against all three of the other teams in the region in recruiting in recent years, and sure enough, several Connecticut products should feature prominently in the regional.
Fairfield’s Reed Mascolo, a redshirt sophomore, posted a 5.40 ERA in 20 appearances (seven starts) for Wake Forest this season.
Meanwhile, Maryland boasts three Connecticut natives who are key players on its roster: Luke Shliger, a sophomore catcher from Danbury who is third on the Terrapins in hitting at .345, to go with 10 homers and 53 RBI; Nick Lorusso, a junior infielder/pitcher from Monroe who’s hitting .319 with 14 homers and 63 RBI and has also made 10 appearances out of the Terps’ bullpen; and Stamford’s Bobby Zmarzlack, a junior outfielder who’s hitting .290 with 14 homers and 40 RBI.
Emotional return: Penders and his family have emotional ties to Bob Smith Stadium. Penders’ father, Jim Sr., was hit in the head by a ball on that field in 1963 and nearly died.
In fact, he was delivered last rites at nearby Prince George’s County Hospital. The elder Penders survived, but had to learn how to speak and read all over again. Two years later, he was captain of the UConn baseball team that went to the 1965 College World Series.
One of his teammates on that team was his brother, Tom, who had originally committed to play basketball at Duquesne. His mother told him he instead had to enroll at UConn, where he needed to help take care of his brother. Tom, of course, played on both the Huskies’ baseball and men’s basketball teams and went on to a lengthy basketball coaching career at George Washington, Rhode Island, Texas and Houston, among others.
Jim Penders texted his dad soon after he found out about where the Huskies were heading.
“You’d better come back,” Penders told him. “You don’t remember much the last time you were there.”