Stony Brook Crowned #AEBASE Champions
VESTAL, N.Y. – Behind three-straight #AEBASE championship victories, the Stony Brook Seawolves are 2019 America East champions. The regular season champs earned a bye and won in walk-off fashion in their opening game before ultimately defeating Binghamton 7-5 on Saturday for their first championship since 2015 and sixth overall. The Seawolves are the second consecutive team and fourth in the past five years to win both the regular season and tournament championships in the same season.
Stony Brook (31-21) will discover its NCAA Baseball Championship destination during the NCAA Selection Show on Monday, May 27 at noon on ESPNU.
Inning-ending double plays capped both halves of the first frame on Saturday afternoon before the scoring started in the home-half of the second. Stony Brook scored twice in the inning and Binghamton (26-24) answered with a run of their own in the top of the third.
The fourth inning play host to an offensive outburst for the third-seeded Bearcats. Following the emergence of a 3-2 lead, Shane Marshall hit a two-run home run to dead center to ignite the crowd. It was Marshall’s fourth consecutive game with a long ball, tying the championship record for most homers in a single tournament.
From that point on, it was the Seawolves who responded with one run in the bottom half of the fourth to begin a stretch of five unanswered runs. Two solo shots by Michael Wilson and Brandon Alamo tied the game in the fifth and Chris Hamilton made it 7-5 with a two-run double the following inning. Hamilton’s clutch hitting capped a strong week of play and resulted in the junior being named Most Outstanding Player.
Brandon Bonanno allowed two hits in 3.2 shutout innings of relief and joined Hamilton on the All-Championship Team as did teammates Bret Clarke and Sean Buckhout. Marshall, Ben Anderson and Nick Gallagher represented runner-up Binghamton on the team. Hartford’s Drew DeMartino and Nicholas Dombkowski, UAlbany’s Joe Kruszka and Brad Malm, UMass Lowell’s Oscar Marchena and Maine’s Cody Laweryson rounded out the honorees.
Stony Brook junior and #AEBASE Player of the Year Nick Grande earned the conference’s Elite 18 award with a 3.96 as a double major in Political Science and History.
Visit Championship Central for box scores, highlights and recaps from the entire week of play.
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