LA PLUME, Pa.- The Keystone College baseball team captured its 20th consecutive conference championship and second United East title with a 6-3 win over No. 19/24 and No. 2 seed Penn State Harrisburg Sunday morning.
Penn State Harrsiburg got on the board in the third with a solo home run. Keystone cashed in on some runs in the fourth as Andy Rivas (Bronx, N.Y./Academy for Language and Technology) brought home two with a single followed by an RBI single by Hunter Rauch (Lincoln, Del./Cape Henlopen), and a sacrifice fly by Cooper Fesh (Bethel, Conn./Bethel).
The Giants added two more runs in the fifth which featured another sacrifice fly from Rivas. No one scored again until the eighth when the Nittany Lions came through with a two-run single. Those would be the last runs Harrisburg would put up in the conference final.Â
Rivas earned United East Tournament MVP honors as he recorded three RBI in the championship. Carlos Pascual (Paterson, N.J./International) was the lone Giant with a multi-hit game.
Leam Powell (Phillipsport, N.Y./Chapel Field Christian) earned the win as he went seven innings with three strikeouts. Dylan Byler (Lancaster, Pa./Lampeter-Strasburg) pitched the rest of the game in relief and struck out three.
Keystone (35-9) earned the United East's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. They will find out where they are heading with the NCAA Division III Baseball Selection Show which will air tomorrow afternoon at 12 p.m.
