GRAND FORKS, N.D. (May 23, 2011) – NYIT baseball will begin play at the 2011 Great West Conference Baseball Tournament on Tuesday, May 24 at Kraft Field on the campus of North Dakota in Grand Forks, N.D. The Bears earned the No. 4 seed with a 13-12 league record and will face tri-state area foe NJIT at 2 p.m. EST. The tournament follows a double-elimination format.

 

Live stats and audio (for select games) will be available through the GWC Tournament homepage on fightingsioux.com.

 

Utah Valley, the regular season champions, enter the tournament as the No. 2 seed with a 22-2 record and will begin defense of its 2010 tournament title against No. 8 seed Chicago State (4-19).

For the second consecutive year, Northern Colorado (19-7) enters the tournament as the No. 2 seed and will play No. 7 seed North Dakota (7-17). No. 3 seed Houston Baptist (16-12) rounds out the first day of competition against No. 6 seed Texas-Pan American (10-19).

 

Earlier this month the Bears and Highlanders split the regular-season series 2-2 with NYIT winning the opener and finale. Sophomores Steve Cotov (Ozone Park, N.Y.) and Ryan Dillabough (Whitby, Ontario, Canada) earned wins on the hill, while Dillabough registered the save in game one. Designated hitter Ali Rodriguez (Yorktown, Va.) batted .471 through the four games with four runs, two doubles and four RBI, while rookie Rob Cafiero (Bethpage, N.Y.) hit .400 with three runs, a double, a home run and right RBI. Rodriguez was also 6-for-7 on stolen bases.

 

The Bears will face tough competition from Bryan Bleakley and Matt Tomczyk at the plate. Last time around, Bleakley batted .375 with three runs, a double, a home run and an RBI. Tomczyk hit the same clip with four runs, a double and six RBI. On the mound, DJ Roche and Tripp Davis earned the wins with Roche pitching a complete game shutout on game two of the series. He struck out 10 Bears.

 

NYIT finished the 2011 regular-season with a tough 1-3 weekend on the road at Houston Baptist. The Bears won the second game of Friday’s doubleheader 7-6. The victory was earlyed by sophomore Marcos Perez (Bronx, N.Y.), who improved to 4-4 on the year and 1-1 in league play. JC Costa (Flushing, N.Y.) earned his fourth save of the season after tossing an inning of shutout relief. Senior Effrey Valdez (Flushing, N.Y.) scored the game-winning run on a Cafiero single to center field. The game was tied on a Jerry Smith (Nesconset, N.Y.) single down the right field line that plated Dan Lackner (New Hyde Park, N.Y.) and Robert Loftus (Massapequa, N.Y.).

 

 

About NYIT

New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees in more than 90 fields of study, including architecture and design; arts and sciences; education; engineering and computing sciences; health professions; management; and osteopathic medicine. A non-profit independent, private institution of higher education, NYIT has more than 15,000 students attending campuses on Long Island and Manhattan, online, and at its global campuses. NYIT sponsors 11 NCAA Division II programs and one Division I team.

Led by President Edward Guiliano, NYIT is guided by its mission to provide career-oriented professional education, offer access to opportunity to all qualified students, and support applications-oriented research that benefits the larger world. To date, 85,000 graduates have received degrees from NYIT. For more information, visit nyit.edu.

 

###

 
Contact       
Sabrina Polidoro
Assistant Director of Communications and Marketing
Sports Information Director
O: 516.686.7504
C: 516.351.7664
spolidor@nyit.edu