Baseball rocked for 12 in the first

After having its game with Temple rained out, the Penn baseball team fell hard to Villanova. The rain was the Penn baseball team's worst enemy yesterday. The 3 p.m. game with Temple was rained out, and the team's opening round game of the Liberty Bell Classic last night against Villanova was called after six innings. But maybe the rain should have kept pouring. In the top half of the first inning at Veterans Stadium, Villanova piled on 12 runs, en route to a six-inning, 15-6 victory over the Quakers. Senior Todd Mahoney got the start for Penn, but gave up seven runs before giving way to freshman Nicholas Barnhorst, who gave up five runs of his own before getting three outs. "We didn't give ourselves a chance," Penn coach Bob Seddon said. "We had a disastrous first inning." The Quakers attributed the 12-run Villanova offensive onslaught not to poor pitching on the part of Mahoney and Barnhorst, but to sharp hitting from the Wildcat lineup. "They just hit the ball really well," senior centerfielder Drew Corradini said. "We didn't make any errors, the pitchers were throwing strikes, they didn't walk any guys -- they just hit the ball well." After the first inning, however, Penn played Villanova equally, if not better, outscoring the Wildcats 6-3 in the final five innings. "You have to flush those bad innings down the toilet," senior captain Joe Carlon, who was named Ivy League Player of the Week, said. "You can't sit there and dwell on them." For the rest of the game, Penn coach Bob Seddon went deep into his young pitching staff -- and it responded. Junior Ray Broome, sophomore Anthony Napolitano and freshman Brian Burket scattered three runs over the remaining five innings. Napolitano, who came into yesterday's contest with a hefty 13.50 Earned Run Average, struck out the side in his one inning of action yesterday. "Everyone that got in there once the team settled down [did well]," Corradini said. "It's a different atmosphere [at Veterans Stadium], with the astroturf, the different mound and such a large area. "If you take away that first inning, we won the game." The usually solid Penn hitters took their time getting warmed up at the Vet last night. Villanova starter Drew Baylor kept Penn in check until the fourth inning, in which Penn scored all six of its runs. "[Baylor] had a good curveball and a good sinker that we hadn't seen in a while," Corradini said. "Other than that I still think we hit the ball pretty well. We had the six-run inning and eight hits, so [the bats] did come to life." The Quakers had hoped to use yesterday's two games to get a lot of different people playing time and perhaps settle lingering lineup questions before their next two Ivy League games this weekend against Brown and Yale. But the rain brought those plans to a screeching halt. "It's disappointing not to get the game in, especially for some of the younger guys who would have gotten an opportunity to play," Corradini said. Rather than play an important 18 innings of baseball, a frustrated Penn team had to settle for six. "We would have found out a lot that could help us on the weekends," Seddon said. "The day didn't do anything for us."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.