The UConn baseball team (17-17, 5-4 Big East) brought the brooms out at Elliot Ballpark, sweeping the Georgetown Hoyas (12-23, 1-5 Big East) in a three-game weekend series.
After losing the first two series in conference play, the Huskies have flipped the momentum to a winning record in Big East play.
The series was altered to two nine-inning games on Friday afternoon due to the weather. The series wrapped up on Sunday.
Cold temperatures during the first game of the doubleheader made the ball tough to hit, but that allowed both teams’ pitching staff to take advantage.
Left-handed pitcher Oliver Pudvar pitched the game’s first six innings and retired 11 of the last 12 Hoyas he faced. The redshirt sophomore from Shelburne, Vt. limited Georgetown to two runs. The defining moment of his outing came in the top of the third inning when the Manhattan transfer got out of a bases-loaded jam with one out, getting a strikeout and foul out that kept the Huskies within a run.
Sophomore Tyler Minick hit his 10th home run of the season that got the Huskies on the board in the bottom of the second inning.
The game remained at 2-1 until the bottom of the seventh inning when graduate student Sam Biller drilled a solo shot to right center field that evened the score at two runs apiece.
Relief from right-handed pitcher Sean Finn, who retired all six batters he faced in the seventh and eighth innings, paved the way for a tiebreaker. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Georgetown’s pitching staff gave up five walks, including a walk to graduate student Beau Root with the bases loaded that gave Connecticut a 3-2 lead. The lead doubled to two after Biller drove in a run on an RBI groundout.
Right-handed pitcher Brady Afthim closed to give UConn its secondstraight series-opening win. The senior from Windham, Maine earned his sixth save of the year with a scoreless ninth inning.
UConn’s pitching staff came up clutch again in the second game of the doubleheader.
Right-handed pitcher Tommy Ellisen pitched the first 5.2 innings and set a career-high in strikeouts, fanning seven batters en route to his second earned win of the season.
“He was outstanding,” UConn head coach Jim Penders said in a postgame interview posted to X. “I thought he kept his poise.”
Senior right-handed pitcher Ian Cooke earned his second save of the season with 3.1 innings out of the bullpen. The reigning Big East Pitcher of the Year struck out seven of the batters he retired.
On the offensive side, the Huskies exploded in the bottom of the fourth inning. Juniors Ryan Daniels and Aidan Dougherty hit singles. Biller followed, getting hit by a pitch that loaded the bases for UConn captain Bryan Padilla, who seized the opportunity by hitting a two-run single that put Connecticut ahead 2-1.
Junior Grant MacArthur followed the reigning All-Big East second baseman with an RBI double. Freshman catcher Connor Lane put the cherry on top of a five-run inning with a two-run single.
The Huskies added on top of the cushion in back-to-back innings. In the bottom of the fifth inning, Biller laid down an RBI bunt single. An inning later, graduate student Caleb Shpur hit a two-run double with two outs that gave UConn a 7-3 lead.
The game got out of Georgetown’s hands even more in the eighth inning as Connecticut scored three times to secure the doubleheader sweep.
MacArthur got on the board first in the series finale with an RBI double that brought two runs across home plate. Georgetown cut the 2-0 lead in half with an RBI double off the right field wall in the top of the fourth inning.
The Huskies responded in the bottom half of the frame, with an RBI sacrifice fly by Biller.
That 3-1 lead expanded to 6-1 after the Huskies scored three more in the fifth inning. Shpur hit an RBI single up the middle. Dougherty did even more damage, hitting a two-run single to center field before being thrown out at second base.
“We haven’t done that much,” Penders said on the offensive sparks late in the game. “Finally, we did that. We’ve had a lot of success doing that.”
Despite that miscue, Penders loved the base-running effort by his team.
“We ran the bases really well,” he said following the game in an interview posted on X.
In the top of the seventh inning, the Hoyas cut UConn’s lead to four, but the Huskies responded again with a solo home run by Shpur that made it an 8-2 ballgame.
Dougherty hit a sacrifice fly to left field that brought Minick across home plate.
Despite Georgetown scoring a run in the top of the ninth inning, it was nowhere near enough to surmount the deficit.
The Huskies are now 60-23 against Georgetown.
UConn will travel to Chestnut Hill, Mass. to play former conference rival Boston College late Tuesday afternoon.