West Chester baseball’s Division II College World Series run ends against top-ranked North Greenville, 8-5

CARY, N.C. – The West Chester baseball team hasn’t played like the lowest-seeded team in the field at the Division II College World Series.

Unfortunately for the Golden Rams, North Greenville has looked every bit the part of the highest seed.

The top-ranked Crusaders got a third-inning grand slam from Pat Monteith and built a lead big enough to hold on for a 8-5 victory that eliminated WCU in the semifinals of the national championship tournament at the USA Baseball National Training Complex.

North Greenville, which handed the Rams both of their losses in Cary, will play for the title against either Point Loma or Rollins.

“A lot of words, just a lot of emotions and thoughts go through your head after a loss of that magnitude and certainly the season coming to an end, which is harder than all of it,” West Chester coach Mike LaRosa said. “North Greenville did what they did the other night to us. They seemed to come up with all the big plays when they needed to. Our deficit early on was just too much to overcome.”

As was the case in the earlier meeting between the teams, the Rams put two men on in their first at-bat. Zach Wright started the game with a walk and Justin Horn followed with a single. But just as it did last Sunday, it couldn’t get either runner home.

The Rams (36-15) also left a man in scoring position in the second before North Greenville took control with a rally that started quietly with a walk to Ethan Stringer after Rams starter Gabe Rappa retired the first two hitters in the inning.

John Michael Faile followed with a single and Marek Chlup walked to load the bases before Monteith unloaded his homer over the left-field wall, one pitch after pitching coach John Fleming had come out to the mound to talk to Rappa.

“It slipped fast,” LaRosa said. “One big swing puts them up 4-0 and we lost by three. So that’s one you wish you had back.”

North Greenville (53-10) extended its lead to 7-0 with three runs in the fourth before West Chester finally began to strike back on a Mike Ferrara solo homer, his second of the World Series, leading off the fourth.

After the Crusaders answered back with a run in the top of the fifth, the Rams continued to chip away by scoring three times on singles by John DeMucci, Wright, and Horne, and a two-run double by Ferrara.

WCU got another run closer in the eighth on a North Greenville throwing error while trying to turn a double play.

At that point, LaRosa turned to his ace starter Braeden Fausnaught on short rest to try and keep his team within striking distance by preventing the Crusaders from doing any more damage. He succeeded by throwing 2⅔ shutout innings, striking out five and hitting as high as 94 mph on the radar gun.

“That was easily my best stuff all year,” said Fausnaught, who broke the single-season school record by increasing his innings total to 104 in the game. “It was almost out-of-body with all the adrenaline and the emotion.”

As dominant as Fausnaught was, it wasn’t enough to complete the comeback and force a rematch with North Greenville on Friday for a spot in the championship round.

“We fought to the end, which I knew we would,” LaRosa said. “I knew we weren’t going to go down easy. You could see it getting out of hand down 7-0, but that’s just not our style to roll over.”

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