LOWELL, Mass. — Maine is in danger of being the first team sent packing from the America East baseball tournament for a second consecutive year.

The Black Bears fell behind by eight runs, couldn’t deliver big hits late in the game and lost 9-5 to Maryland-Baltimore County in an opening-round game Thursday at LeLacheur Park.

“Now we’ve got to fight through the losers’ bracket, and this team does play a little bit better sometimes when their back’s up against the wall,” Maine Coach Steve Trimper said.

Last year Maine lost to Stony Brook and Binghamton, and quickly returned to Orono. At 1 p.m. Friday, Maine will try to avoid that dispiriting bus ride when it faces Hartford.

On Thursday, the second-seeded Retrievers (33-18) took advantage of Maine freshman pitcher Justin Courtney’s inability to use his breaking pitch to get ahead in counts.

Forced to throw fastballs to a team that feasts on them, Courtney lasted only 21/3 innings, giving up four runs. The big blow was a towering smash over the right-field wall by Connor Hax that brought home the first two runs. Courtney allowed another run on a balk in the third and was removed by Trimper.

“They’re fastball hunters, we know that. Just falling behind early in counts and having to throw fastballs was really the issue,” Courtney said after his record fell to 5-6.

Five Maine pitchers followed Courtney, but the first three also surrendered runs as UMBC built a large cushion in search of its first-ever victory in this tournament. Behind stocky junior pitcher Conrad Wozniak, that appeared to be a given.

But Maine (24-27), the No. 3 seed, was persistent in putting runners on through the middle innings. The key moment came in the sixth, when the Black Bears finally scored. Alex Cabrera doubled, Scott Heath singled and Brett Chappell lifted a routine fly to right that was deep enough to score Cabrera. But Jake Barnes dropped it, putting runners on first and third with nobody out and Maine trailing 8-1.

The next three pitches from Wozniak (4-1) were crucial. He got Luke Morrill to fly to left, Brian Doran to pop to short and Kevin Stypulkowski on a pop to third. Those three batters each collected two hits but were tamed when it mattered most.

Trimper pointed to that as the sequence that may have sealed his team’s fate.

“We just tried to chip back. Once you can swing the momentum, even getting one or two runs, you’re still in the game,” he said.

“I really believe that if we could have kept it to five runs, we’re in the game. Because as you get deeper in games, we’re a team that tends to score a little bit more as it goes on once you get a starter out. You kind of saw that happening. But now we’re chasing seven or eight runs as opposed to four or five and it’s a little different story.”

Wozniak was lifted after seven innings, leading 9-1. Maine got three runs in the eighth and one in the ninth off three relievers, highlighted by Stypulkowski’s two-run double. But the Black Bears also stranded 10 runners.

“Late in the game we got to their bullpen,” said Doran, who struck out to end the game. “Get some base runners on, we started to get some momentum going. Guys were feeling good and hitting the ball hard and, I don’t know, just didn’t get it done.”

Hartford (22-30) lost 2-0 to top seed Stony Brook in Thursday’s first game. Maine split four games with the Hawks this season and will send Heath, the senior captain, to the mound.

He is 6-3 with a 3.86 ERA in a team-leading 79 innings pitched.

Trimper knows what to expect from the tenacious Westbrook native.

“He’s going to put on his hockey pads and play hockey on a baseball field. That’s how he plays,” Trimper said. “There’s no better guy that we like to have on the mound right now in these situations.”

 

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