NEWARK, NJ – Rutgers-Newark senior rightfielder Michael Cassese nicked the leftfield foul pole with a towering home run which ignited a 12-run fifth inning in a 12-7 opening round win over Ramapo College in the New Jersey Athletic Conference Championship Tournament.

BOX SCORE & PLAY-BY-PLAY

The Scarlet Raiders (22-16) seemed dead in the water, trailing 5-0 with just two singles against Roadrunner starter Matt Jenisch through the first four innings.

But Cassese's three-run shot put the Raiders on the board and lit the fuse for eight hits in the bottom of the fifth as Rutgers-Newark came one batter short of batting around twice. The Roadrunners only error of the game helped push across the final four runs.

The win sends the third-seeded Raiders to No. 2 Rowan, a 15-3 winner over The College of New Jersey today, on Thursday for the second round. Ramapo (19-10) goes to top-seeded Kean, a 3-1 winner over Montclair State (18-16) in the other opening round contest. Sixth-seeded Montclair State travels to fifth-seeded TCNJ (26-10) as the higher seeds took all three opening round contests in the six-team double elimination tournament.  All three games being at 3:30 p.m.

Senior second baseman Matt Connors, the NCAA D-III leader in walks per game who drew three bases on balls in the contest, had a two-run double, walked and scored twice in the fifth. Senior shortstop Patrick Reitemeyer drove in three runs with a pair of singles and junior leftfielder Mike Ciaramello singled, walked and scored twice in the outburst. Junior catcher Anthony Palladino capped the inning with a two-out, two-run double into the rightfielder corner.

Junior righthander Connor Medler picked up the win to improve to 7-1 on the season despite giving up 10 hits and six runs in five and a third innings. However, five of those runs were unearned.

Freshman reliever Steven Wikoff came on with the bases loaded and one out in the sixth and got the first batter he faced to ground into a double play to kill the threat. He gave up a run on a walk and two singles in the seventh before junior Nick Evans and sophomore Matt Larangera each turned in an inning of no-hit shutout relief.

Ramapo jumped out to an early lead when an error ignited a four-run in the fourth. After the miscue, junior first baseman Dan Moreno , who went three for four, singled to start a string of four five straight hits for the Roadrunners. Senior outfielder Nicholas DiGirolamo had an RBI single, senior catcher Peter Dacenko delivered a two-run single and senior second baseman Pat Driscoll singled ahead of an RBI double down the leftfielder line by junior centerfielder Lee Rozins. But Driscoll became the second Roadrunner to be thrown out at the plate in the game when he tried to score from first on Rozins' double to end the inning.

Ciaramello made a catch near the leftfield line and threw out Ramapo junior outfielder Kevin Knox at home in the third to end the inning. He hit relay man Reitemeyer to start the inning-ending play in the fifth.

With two stolen bases, Connors tied the single season record at Rutgers-Newark with 25.  Already the career leader stolen bases with 70, he joins Chuck Kling (1998) and Jason Celentano (1994) as the single-season standard setters.

Connors' three walks put him two short of Dave Sica's school record of 44 walks in a season.  Connors is already the career walks lead with 131.

Reitemeyer's two hits pushed his R-N career leading total to 212 while the three RBIs moved him into a third-place tie on the Raider all-time list with 140.  He pulled even with former teammate Anthony Yeswita (2007-10) with 140 runs batted in.  Dena (153, 1996-99) and Steve Ballerini (151, 1999-2002) are one and two on the list.