STORRS, Conn.—The first game of a three-game series between the top two teams in the BIG EAST standings came down to the final pitch and Villanova (28-21, 15-6) fell in a 4-3 decision to Connecticut (35-15, 19-3) at Burrill Family Field on Friday afternoon. A walk-off, two-run single with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning accounted for the difference in the back-and-forth game. Earlier in the contest junior third baseman
Chloe Smith (Sacramento, Calif.) had put the Wildcats ahead with a two-run homer in the fifth inning.
Smith went 2-for-4 with two runs scored while notching her first game this season with both a double and a home run in the same game. She scored the first run of the game in the top of the third when she doubled down the left field line with two outs and scored on an RBI single by graduate pitcher
Paige Rauch (Windsor, N.Y.). Two runs in the bottom of that inning gave the Huskies a 2-1 lead which they held until Smith turned the tables with her fifth home run of the year with nobody out in the fifth.
Villanova got a boost from sophomore relief pitcher
Caroline Pellicano (Norristown, Pa.) in the middle innings. She entered the game to start the bottom of the fourth and had worked 3 2/3 scoreless innings before Connecticut won the game despite being down to their final out. Pellicano (3-3, 1.48 ERA) walked the first batter she faced in the fourth inning but struck out the next two on called third strikes on a day when she had her array of off-speed offerings working from the start.
Junior catcher
Ally Jones (Brielle, N.J.) threw out a Huskies base runner trying to steal for the second time in the game to end the fourth inning. Pellicano worked around walks in the fifth and sixth innings, then struck out two more batters in the bottom of the seventh while trying to work out of a jam. Aziah James singled up the middle leading off the UConn seventh but Pellicano struck out leadoff batter Briana Marcelino for the first out. James stole second and then moved to third on a chopper high into the air off the bat of Reese Guevarra which put runners at the corners with one away.
Guevarra stole second to put the potential tying and winning runs in scoring position, but Pellicano froze Lexi Hastings with a 1-2 pitch on the outside corner for a called third strike and the second out of the inning. That brought cleanup hitter Jana Sanden to the plate and Pellicano got ahead of her with a called strike before Sanden sent the second pitch she saw into left field for a base hit. James scored the tying run and Guevarra was behind her with the winning run, sliding into the plate just ahead of the throw to the plate from junior left fielder
Dani Dabroski (Cedar Grove, N.J.).
Connecticut scored its first two runs of the game off of Rauch in similar fashion in the bottom of the third inning. Marcelino singled and stole second to begin that inning before coming around to score on Hastings' one-out single. Sanden singled to put runners at the corners with one out and Hastings scored the go-ahead run on a high chopper back to the circle by Olivia Sappington which Rauch had no play on. The Huskies finished the day with four runs on eight hits despite being forced into soft contact by the combination of Rauch and Pellicano in the circle.
Jones ended both the third and fourth innings by throwing out Connecticut base stealers. She has thrown out 12 runners trying to steal this season which is tied for the 11
th most in a single season in the Villanova record book. In all this year Jones has thrown out 42.9 percent of base stealers, with that percentage tied for sixth best in a season in school history.
Friday's game clinched the regular season BIG EAST title for the Huskies, with the Wildcats still battling Butler and DePaul for the second, third and fourth seeds in next week's BIG EAST Championship.
