SALISBURY, MD. – Cortland scored nine runs over the first two innings and finished the game with 20 hits as the nationally 14th-ranked Red Dragons defeated Widener University, 16-1, to open the season at Salisbury's Williams Stadium.
Cortland will face host and nationally top-ranked Salisbury in a doubleheader Sunday at 10 a.m.
Matthew Krafft (Cornwall) finished 3-for-4 with two RBI and was one of six Cortland players to finish with multiple hits.
Nick Chemotti (Warners/West Genesee) was 2-for-2 with two doubles and three RBI,
Dylan Mackenzie (Canandaigua/Canandaigua Academy) went 2-for-3 with a triple, walk, two RBI and two runs, and
Zachary Kringdon (Larchmont/Mamaroneck) finished 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI.
Chris Bonacci (Syracuse/West Genesee) ended 2-for-4 with two runs and
Dan Jackson (Lagrangeville/Arlington) came off the bench and went 2-for-2.
Also for the Red Dragons,
Mat Bruno (Rye) was 1-for-3 with a double, walk, two RBI and two runs and
Dylan Tierney (East Greenbush/Columbia) went 1-for-2 with two walks, an RBI and two runs.
Cortland starter
Will McCarthy (Farmingdale) threw three scoreless innings, allowing two hits and two walks with one strikeout. He left after three frames due to a predetermined pitch count and was awarded the victory.
Bryan Bernard (Howell, NJ) fanned three batters and allowed one hit in two scoreless frames, followed by
Patrick Dalton (Bethpage) tossing a scoreless sixth and seventh inning, allowing two hits and a walk with one strikeout.
Xander Payne (Medina) gave up no runs on one hit and a walk and struck out one in the eighth, and
Grant Biederman (Huntington Station/Walt Whitman) allowed a run on two hits with a strikeout and a walk in the ninth.
Brandon Robinson went 2-for-2 and Myles Calderbank was 1-for-2 with an RBI for the Pride, which dropped to 1-3 with the loss. Starter Aidan O'Brien allowed nine runs, eight earned, on seven hits over an inning and a third. He walked three and struck out two.
Cortland scored five times in the top of the first on a rally that began with two outs and no one on. Kringdon doubled, Bruno walked and Chemotti hit an RBI double, with a second run scoring on the play due to an error. Tierney walked and Mackenzie followed with a two-run triple to right center. Mackenzie scored on a Krafft RBI single. Cortland's four-run second featured back-to-back two-run doubles by Bruno and Chemotti.
The Red Dragons picked up a run in the third on Kringdon's RBI single, followed by two in the fourth on a wild pitch and an error. Tierney and Krafft singled in runs in the fifth to make it 14-0, and Cortland's final two runs came in the eighth on an error and a
Liam Ward (Albion) bases-loaded walk. Widener broke up the Cortland shutout in the bottom of the ninth on Calderbank's two-out RBI single.
