Hawks prey on Tigers

While the sun played hide-and-seek behind the clouds and the Clarke Field DJ blared bad '80s music between batters and innings, the baseball team continued its frustrating season of ups and downs yesterday afternoon with an 8-3 loss to Monmouth.

Not much went right for the Tigers (8-16 overall, 4-4 Ivy League), who fell to the Hawks (15-10-1) for the fourth straight time dating back to 2005. Princeton's five pitchers combined to serve up 11 hits for eight runs — along with eight walks, several wild pitches and a hit batter — but the loss was the whole team's, not just the pitching staff's.

"It was kind of sloppy," junior leftfielder Micah Kaplan said after the game. "It certainly wasn't our best effort."

Tiger fielders were charged with three errors in the game, and other than senior second baseman Aaron Prince's two-run homer, Princeton hitters could get very little going at the plate, managing only five hits against Monmouth's strong pitching.

"We didn't hit, and if you don't hit, you're not going to be able to win," Kaplan said.

Both starting pitchers, senior Gavin Fabian and the Hawks' Kyle Breese, climbed the mound looking for their first wins of the season. Fabian gave up just two runs in his four innings of work, but it was Breese who came out on top, striking out four in seven innings while also yielding just two runs.

Monmouth struck right away when Kyle Higgins led off the game with a single, advanced to third on a wild pickoff attempt by Fabian and scored on a sacrifice fly despite a diving catch in left field by Kaplan.

Prince temporarily put the Tigers in the lead when he drove home sophomore shortstop Dan DeGeorge and himself by cleanly belting a pitch over the left field wall, his second homer of the year. The Hawks got a run back just a few minutes later, though, with an RBI single in the fourth to knot the score at two.

Throughout the fifth and sixth innings, Monmouth ran away with the game by feasting on senior reliever Michael Zaret. In addition to getting hit hard, Zaret threw wildly, walking two batters and sending senior catcher Sal Iacono to the backstop several times with errant pitches. The defense didn't do much to help, committing two costly errors that led to runs. By the seventh, the Hawks had a commanding 7-2 lead.

Monmouth added one final run in the eighth before Princeton responded in the bottom of the inning with a run of its own. Prince picked up his third RBI, knocking in freshman rightfielder Jon Broscious on a groundout. Unfortunately for the Tigers, they could never get a rally going and faded out for good in the bottom of the ninth with a foulout, strikeout and groundout to end the game.

"We just couldn't get the bats going today," DeGeorge said. "It's tough to start something when the two guys who are leading off every inning aren't getting on."

Though the non-conference game won't figure into the Ivy standings, the loss still stings.

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"Everyone approaches it the same as any other game," DeGeorge said. "We want to win."

Like all of Princeton's midweek non-conference games, yesterday's contest factors into the battle for the New Jersey Cup. Rutgers, Monmouth, Seton Hall and Rider are the Garden State opponents the Tigers battle each year for the Cup, and with yesterday's loss, Princeton is off to an 0-2 start in that race.

This weekend, the Tigers will return to the Ivy League contests that will determine whether they make the College World Series. Princeton opens divisional play with back-to-back doubleheaders at Clarke Field on Saturday and Sunday afternoon against Gehrig Division rival Columbia (10-18-1, 5-7).