No. 8 Hurricanes struggle on the mound, fall in opener

CORAL GABLES — The Miami Hurricanes baseball team’s opening night at Mark Light Field quickly turned sour for the nearly 3,500 home fans who turned out for the first game of the season.

Penn State tagged Miami starter Gage Ziehl for four second-inning runs, putting the No. 8 Hurricanes in an early hole that they could not recover from, ultimately losing 9-5.

“Just not an overall good game,” Miami coach Gino DiMare said. “A little humbling, certainly, [I] told the players. But baseball can do that to you. It’s not the way we wanted to come out.”

Ziehl, a sophomore who came out of the UM bullpen in his freshman season, got the Friday night start but struggled early. After giving up a pair of first-inning hits and escaping the jam, he gave up two singles and walked a batter to load the bases in the second inning. Penn State junior shortstop Jay Harry promptly cleared the bases, lining a three-run double to put the Nittany Lions on the board. Senior designated hitter Thomas Bramley hit an RBI double of his own to put Penn State ahead by four runs.

DiMare let Ziehl come back out for the third inning, but the results were not better. Junior second baseman Kyle Hannon hit a solo home run to extend the Nittany Lions’ lead to five, and the next two batters singled before DiMare replaced Ziehl with junior transfer Ben Chestnutt.

“He’s up a lot and falling behind a lot, in deep counts a lot. … All things that are just not good,” DiMare said. “So he’s got to do a better job. The pitches that they hit, they were up, some of them. And if I had to guess, the way they squared them up, they probably had more of the fat part of the plate.”

Chestntutt escaped the jam with three strikeouts but did not escape the game unscathed. After UM junior shortstop Dominic Pitelli hit a solo home run, Penn State senior left fielder Tayven Kelley got the run back by tagging Chestnutt with a solo home run to make the score 6-1.

While the Hurricanes’ pitching struggled, Nittany Lions starter Travis Luensmann held Miami in check, pitching five innings and allowing just one run. He gave up two hits and struck out four.

“I thought he was pretty much dominant with his fastball,” DiMare said. “I don’t think his off-speed was a whole lot. He threw split-fingers, and a lot of them were down in the dirt. He basically beat us with the fastball.”

The Hurricanes appeared poised to start a comeback when junior right fielder Zach Levenson crushed a 410-foot home run and Miami put two runners on with one out. But the Hurricanes could not get the rally going, as Pitelli struck out and senior center fielder Dario Gomez grounded out to end the frame.

The missed opportunity proved costly, as the Nittany Lions scored three runs in the eighth to put the game well out of Miami’s reach. That did not stop the Hurricanes from trying, though.

Yohandy Morales hit an RBI double, and junior transfer Ian Farrow launched his first home run as a Hurricane 425 feet, pulling Miami within four runs. But the last attempt at a rally also fell short, and Miami could not muster any ninth-inning magic.

“I just wish there were some guys on base when those guys hit some home runs today,” DiMare said.

Miami continues its opening series with Penn State at 7 p.m. on Saturday, hoping to carry the strong hitting from the end of Friday’s game into the season’s second contest.

“Very, very happy to see our guys battle,” DiMare said. “I didn’t see any quit from our guys. We just did not play good baseball today.”