NCAA bound: Yale tops Brown, 7-5, to take Ivy League baseball title, automatic bid in Field of 64
· Yahoo Sports
WEST HAVEN — The Yale baseball team showed all season it had a variety of ways to score runs– power, speed, small-ball, old-school and analytics all in the brew.
But the oldest rule there is in baseball is, it takes 27 outs to win. Yale, after falling behind, turned to Teo Spadaccini to get the bulk of them, and Jack Ohman to get the most crucial ones Sunday.
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As Spadaccini silenced Brown bats for 5 2/3 innings, Yale sprayed line drives across the entire field, chopped, bunted, stole, pecked and pestered seven runs on the scoreboard. Then Ohman, who started and won Friday, came out of the bullpen to escape a bases-loaded jam in the eighth and close out a 7-5 victory at Bush Field, to give Yale the Ivy League tournament and the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Bulldogs (30-13-1), who swept this tournament, will learn their NCAA assignment in Memorial Day.
Brown (23-20) defeated Columbia, 4-2, earlier Sunday to stay alive, and jumped out to a 3-0 lead, knocking out Yale starter Daniel Cohen in the second inning.
Spadaccini relieved, got out of a bases-loaded jam with the help of a great catch near the railing in foul territory by first baseman Davis Hanson, then retired 11 in a row as his teammates went to work, playing their signature brand of baseball.
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The Bulldogs scored three runs on sacrifice flies, three bunts, one forcing an error, another a successful safety squeeze, to build a 7-3 lead over the next three innings. After Brady Ruiz-Weiss’ sac fly got Yale on the board, Kaiden Dossa doubled home a run and scored on a single by Fairfield’s Garrett Larsen to tie the game.
Ruiz-Weiss and Dossa hit sacrifice flies to give the Bulldogs the lead in the third inning. Hanson executed the squeeze, getting down the bunt on a pitch up near his chin, and Owen Turner singled home a run to make it 7-3 in the fourth.
Spadaccini continued to get outs early in counts to carry the Bulldog’s lead into the eighth inning, using only 54 pitches through 5 2/3 innings. He departed after a single and a walk in the eight inning, and after Ben Winslow walked a batter and hit a batter, Ohman, a sophomore, the son of former MLB pitcher Will Ohman, allowed a sac fly, but struck out Cam Legrassa and Matt Luigs to keep the Bulldogs in front, then worked around a lead-off single in the ninth, striking out three. It was the first relief appearance of Ohman’s college career.
Yale defeated Columbia 12-3 on Friday, as Ohman pitched five innings, and Brown 5-2 Saturday to reach the championship round from the winner’s bracket of the double elimination tournament. The program last reached the NCAA Tournament in 2017 as the regular season champ, and on Sunday won the conference tournament, instituted in 2023, for the first time.