ORONO, Maine — It is all down to one game.
Sophomore catcher Dean O’Neill belted an important two-run homer in the seventh inning and Luc Lavigueur and Gianni Gambardella made clutch pitches when they had to as the University of Maine baseball team beat Albany 7-5 in a game that featured a rain delay of 1 hour and 25 minutes.
UMaine (8-14 in America East and 12-36 overall), and Albany (9-13, 14-33-2) will finish their series on Saturday at noon and the winner will move on to the America East Tournament in Binghamton while the loser is done.
UMaine owns the tiebreaker against Albany.
O’Neill’s two-run homer to left, his seventh of the season, made it 7-3 and Gambardella pitched out of jams in the eighth and ninth innings, allowing one run in each.
O’Neill said he was “trying to be present in the moment and try not to let the situation get too big.”
He said he missed a fastball on his first swing, a pitch he felt he should have hit, but then he “calmed down and got a pitch I could hit. It was a hanging curve.”
“That was huge,” said UMaine coach Nick Derba. “We were short on pitching and that gave us a cushion.”
All-America East first teamer Gambardella had pitched to just three hitters since April 7, all last weekend, due to tendinitis in his elbow.
“It felt great to be out there and help the team win,” said Gambardella, who allowed three runs, two earned, over three innings to earn a save.
The Black Bears took a 1-0 lead in the first inning when Jeremiah Jenkins ripped an opposite-field double to left center, moved to third on White’s long fly ball to center and scored on Jake Marquez’s two-out infield single to the shortstop hole.
Will Binder tied it up in the third with his fourth homer of the season, an opposite-field blast to right center field.
But UMaine regained the lead with a pair of runs in the bottom of the third.
Colin Plante stroked a base hit to center and Jenkins walked.
Goodman squared around to bunt and Plante took off for third only to be thrown out by catcher Levi McAllister.
Jenkins remained at first.
Goodman launched a double to the warning track in left center and Jenkins motored to third.
White then delivered a sharp single to the right of the second base bag to score Jenkins and Goodman.
Ryan Ferremi singled home a run for Albany in the fourth but Maine got two in the sixth on Jonathan Gonzalez’s RBI single and Will Burns’ sacrifice fly.
Jared Toby doubled home a run in the top of the seventh to make it 5-3 but O’Neill answered with his homer,
Plante had two singles for UMaine while Toby had three doubles and a single for Albany and Ferremi and Michael Maggio had two hits each.
Livigueur was the winner as he allowed seven hits and two earned runs over six innings.
He is now 4-3.
