Starting slow, senior Jon Prosinski found his grove and pitched his third complete game of the season to lead the Seton Hall baseball team to a 9-2 victory over Georgetown on Friday.
Coming into the series with a one game edge in the conference standings, the Pirates moved to 6-4 in the Big East while the Hoyas fell to 4-6.
"First game is always imporatant, it sets the tone for the weekend, especially when you have your number one against their number one," head coach Rob Sheppard said.
Pulling away in the middle innings to an easy win, the Hall fell behind right from the start. The first two batters reached for Georgetown in the first, with leadoff, senior Justin Leeson, scoring on a fielder's choices when senior Guiseppe Papaccio's throw from second to complete the double play was late.
The Hall responded in their half of the first but once again fell behind when Georgetown put another run across in the fourth.
"There were a couple of rough innings early on but I just tried to limit the damage," Prosinski said. "They had me on the ropes in the first and a couple doubles in the fourth, but pretty much they were swinging early in the count and I was throwing strikes so I was able to get a few quick innings."
Helping Prosinski settle down was the Pirates half of the fifth inning which saw them send 10 batters to the plate and put four runs on the board.
The first five batters reached base starting with junior Chris Sheldon working a walk from the nine hole. Senior Ryan Sullivan bunted with Sheldon on second and junior Zack Granite on first, the throw from Hoyas starter Jack Vander Linden went wide allowing Sheldon to score.
With the bases loaded Papaccio hit one through the middle, scoring two and freshman Zack Weigel finished off the scoring in the inning with a sacrifice fly to center field scoring senior Scott Kalamar making the score 5-2.
Following the big inning, Prosinski came back on the mound to pitch his second consecutive one-two-three inning.
The Pirates came right back in their half of the inning putting two across the plate and doing the same the following inning in the seventh to go up 9-2.
"The offense has been great," Prosinski said. "I think this is the few time in three weeks they didn't score 10 for me and we had nine. When you have a big lead like that it makes it easy to attack hitters."
Seven runs was all Prosinski needed as he allowed only one Hoya to reach base in the final five innings to finish his complete game with five strikeouts and allowing only six hits and two runs.
Four different Pirates got two hits with Sullivan being the only starter not to get a hit.
Game two of the series is set for Saturday at 1:00 p.m.
Stephen Valenti can be reached at stephen.valenti@student.shu.edu
