The Bison baseball team continued Patriot League play at home against the Holy Cross Crusaders on April 13-14. The Orange and Blue dropped all three games in the series by final scores of 13-7, 6-3, and 6-3. With these losses, the Bison fall to 10-27 overall and 3-14 within the Patriot League.

Holy Cross ran away with game one early, scoring five runs in the first inning. Despite the deficit, the Bison gained some momentum in the bottom of the third, thanks to an RBI lineout from JohnPaul Bell ’20 and a Dominic Toso ’21 single that brought in Jared Drizin ’19 to score. The two runs brought the score to 6-2 in favor of Holy Cross after three innings.

Holy Cross added four more runs in the top of the fourth to stretch their lead to 10-2. The Bison responded with three of their own in the fourth, including a home run by Tyler Wincig ’20, his sixth of the season. Despite the effort, it was not enough, as Holy Cross extended their lead to 13-7 on their way to the win.

Game two of the series started out well for the Bison. The Orange and Blue scored three runs in the bottom of the second to take an early lead of 3-0. The lead was short-lived, though, as Holy Cross went on to make up for these runs in the next half inning. At this point, the game entered a three-inning scoreless drought thanks to an entertaining pitching battle between Bison starter Jack Grabek ’19 and Holy Cross’ pitcher, who combined to only allow three hits in total until the top of the seventh. Holy Cross broke through in the seventh, scoring two runs in the inning and one in the eighth to give them a 6-3 victory.

Game three of the series was pushed up to the morning due to poor weather conditions expected later in the day. Jeff Gottesman ’19 had a very strong pitching performance, allowing only two runs on six hits over the first seven innings. The Orange and Blue finally scratched across a run when Brendan Lowery ’22 hit a double to score Marc Chernin ’20 and Evan Madigan ’20, tying up the game at 2-2 in the bottom of the seventh. However, Holy Cross scored four runs in the eighth inning and held on for a 6-3 victory.

“Our last game against Holy Cross was a tough loss,” Lowery said. “Jeff [Gottesman] pitched really well to keep us in the game and we definitely had our chances to win it. I believe we are a better team than we appear on paper and our goal for the remainder of the season is to still make the playoffs. Once we make the playoffs, I think we can surprise some people and win the championship.”

The Bison lost 3-1 to Navy at Depew Field on April 17. Pitchers Nate Grisius ’20, Nicholas Sadd ’21, and Hunter Robichaux ’19, combined to provide six scoreless innings of relief. However, the Bison were held to three hits in the game and could not provide the offense to accompany the strong pitching performances. The lone run for the Orange and Blue came off of a Lowery RBI groundout to score Toso.

The Bison will play in a three-game conference road series against Lehigh on April 20-21.