{"id":35284,"date":"2011-05-16T11:23:08","date_gmt":"2011-05-16T15:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=35284"},"modified":"2014-06-09T10:52:17","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T14:52:17","slug":"baseball-team-wins-first-big-east-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/05\/baseball-team-wins-first-big-east-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseball Team Wins First Big East Title"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>The<\/a>
The University of Connecticut baseball team won the Big East regular season title on May 7 at J.O. Christian Field. Photo by Steve Slade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For all of the Huskies\u2019 success on the baseball diamond in recent years \u2013 including winning 30 or more games in six of the past seven seasons \u2013 there have been no championship trophies to display. But that changed on Senior Day this past weekend, when the Huskies raised a championship trophy before a crowd of family members and baseball alumni at J.O. Christian Field, after beating Louisville 7-5 to win the 2011 Big East Regular Season Championship.<\/p>\n

Senior pitcher Greg Nappo earned his eighth win of the year, and junior George Springer became the Huskies\u2019 all-time leading home run hitter during the game after he smashed his 11th home run of the season \u2013 the 45thof his career \u2013 over the left field fence with one on bottom of the fourth inning.<\/p>\n

The Huskies lost the second game of the doubleheader in 10 innings, to improve their record to 36-14-1 and 20-4 in conference play. The regular season title earned UConn the top seed in the Big East Conference Tournament May 25-29 in Clearwater, Fla.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a 26-year old primate off our backs,\u201d head coach Jim Penders said following the game, which saw the Huskies get off to a sluggish start, including committing four errors. \u201cI\u2019ve got to give the kids a lot of credit for battling [on] after the errors and mistakes. It\u2019s one thing crossed of the list. It\u2019s the first championship that we could win, and we accomplished that goal. We\u2019ve got another chance to win a championship in the Big East tournament. We\u2019ve got to keep winning games to have a chance to win an NCAA regional championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nappo, who threw seven innings before getting relief help from Will Jolin and Kevin Vance, had three strikeouts and gave up two earned runs on six hits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made pitches when we had to,\u201d he said. \u201cWe expected to win today. We didn\u2019t want any let downs. We just competed. We battled. We\u2019ve got to thank all the alumni for coming out today to support us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redshirt senior Doug Elliot said, \u201cIt\u2019s nice to finally get one. We\u2019ve got a few more things to do [this year], but it\u2019s nice to get the first one. We came out slow today, but we had to remember what we were playing for. It\u2019s a nice feeling right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penders said he had a sleepless night on Friday, thinking about the possibility of winning a Big East title for the first time and about the bond among those who wore the Huskies baseball uniform over the years, including Elliot\u2019s father, Doug Sr., and his own father, Jim Sr., who both were in the stands on Saturday for the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was nervous. I had the worst night\u2019s sleep in my life,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all about teammates and the guys who came before us \u2013 Dave Ford \u201985, Jim Sarantides \u201986, Jack Hurley \u201987, Sal Tinnerello \u201992, Craig McDonald \u201992, Brian Packi \u201900, and all the guys that contributed so much that didn\u2019t have the opportunity to do it. [This title] is for them too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Huskies will complete the regular season on the road playing non-conference games at Rhode Island today and at Northeastern tomorrow, before the final conference games at Cincinnati at the end of the week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Big East regular season champions, UConn is the top seed in the Big East Conference Tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-35284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 18:53:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35284"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94104,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35284\/revisions\/94104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35284"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=35284"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=35284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}