Alex Calarco had his third trip around the bases by Maryland baseball’s third game of the season.
Calarco bumped fists with coach Matt Swope before tapping home plate in the Terps’ 19-1 win over Mercyhurst on Saturday. The senior catcher’s triad was a part of six Maryland home runs in the opening weekend at the Swig and Swine College Classic — six blasts accounted for nearly half of the team’s 28 runs.
Backed by strong pitching, the Terps leaned on the long ball for their two wins.
“We’ve just got to be cleaner,” Swope said. “Over the course of the year, we’re just trying to stack weekends and weeks of winning baseball. So I just told the guys, it’s nice to end on a high note.”
Six of Maryland’s nine runs against UAB and Ball State came from home runs. Mercyhurst, in its first season at the Division I level, surrendered eight more runs off homers in the lopsided defeat.
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Sophomore shortstop Chris Hacopian set the tone in Friday’s 6-3 win over UAB with a fourth inning grand slam. Maryland’s two other runs that inning came on RBI singles from senior infielder Eddie Hacopian and senior outfielder Elijah Lambros.
Outside of those three plays, the Terps struggled to generate offense. Sophomore utility player Liam Willson stranded five runners and struck out twice in his 0-for-4 Maryland debut against UAB. Lambros also stranded two.
The Terps also struck out 12 times Friday — a total that would have tied for their fourth-most in a game last season. Mercyhurst sent the Terps down swinging 13 times Saturday.
The Terps lost three of four games when they struck out at least 12 times last season. Their only win came with 12 strikeouts in an extra-inning victory against Michigan State.
“We have a lot of work to do. It wasn’t our cleanest performance today,” Chris Hacopian said Friday. “But we got the job done and we got the win.”
Eddie Hacopian opened the scoring against Ball State with an RBI double in the third inning. The Terps’ next two runs were solo homers from redshirt sophomore first baseman Hollis Porter and Calarco.
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But with runners on base, Maryland struggled to capitalize against the Cardinals. It stranded four runners in the seventh and eighth innings after freshman catcher DJ Scheumann’s two-run homer in the sixth off Omar Melendez — what Swope called the team’s only misstep of the weekend. The Terps didn’t record a baserunner in the ninth.
Maryland’s starting pitchers posted a 1.50 ERA across the weekend, combining for 16 strikeouts. Sophomore Joey McMannis is the only key returner from last year’s rotation, while Kyle McCoy is working his way back from injury. Sophomore Evan Smith is trying to establish himself as a consistent weekend starter.
The Terps’ bullpen also impressed. Senior Ryan Van Buren and graduate student Jack Wren each delivered three scoreless innings throughout the weekend, while freshman Logan Hastings and graduate student Devin Milberg did the same over two inning outings. Maryland’s pitching staff left South Carolina with a 2.08 ERA.
“The depth this year is really good,” McCoy said. “I’ve got a lot of confidence in our pitchers.”
