baseball

while fellow big man dom campbell has moved on to howard.

With graduate guard cormac ryan also having declared for the portal in tandem with the nba draft, notre dame is on track to lose its top seven scorers from a season ago. For the moment, that leaves newly minted head coach m icah s hrewsberry with just four returning players. They are sophomore guard a lex Wade, junior guard Tony s anders Jr., sophomore guard J. r Konieczny, junior forward m att Zona. Freshman guard m arkus b urton could play a role on next year’s team. The four returners played a grand total of about 153 minutes, almost all of which is accounted for by Zona.

s ophomore outfielder dm Jefferson turned in the marquee knock, driving in two on a softly hit single to right-center.

b y the inning’s end, n otre d ame led 4-1.

“The most refreshing thing is it started with our small game,” s tiffler said. “ i t’s something that i don’t know if we don’t have confidence in it, or we don’t have a good feel for when we wanna do it. a nd as exciting as it was, it was equally frustrating to make an error with two outs in the next inning and give up two right back to them.” h e sliced a two-run double to right-center, trimming n otre d ame’s advantage to one. v alparaiso applied pressure again in the third, loading the bases with nobody out. s tiffler removed s pivey, who had walked two and committed a pickoff throwing error. o n came junior s ammy c ooper to face the middle of the b eacon lineup. earned run allowed. “ i hope it builds confidence in him, but we need him,” s tiffler said of s pivey. “ s ometimes he runs into that 12-pitch stretch during his outings where he gets out of sync mechanically and it takes him about 12 pitches to get back in. This time it just happened to be at the back of his outing.” i n the bottom of the inning, graduate catcher v inny m artinez paid off c ooper’s h oudini act. With two outs on the board, he launched a 421-foot shot high off the netting in rightcenter field. a fter sophomore third baseman Jack Penney singled home a run in the fifth, m artinez repeated the feat.

That fielding miscue came from freshman second baseman e stevan m oreno. i t put two runners on, bringing up a lex r yan.

With two strikeouts and a pop out, he added his name to the list of i rish relievers to escape bases-loaded, nobodyout jams this season.

Leading off the eighth inning, he was the first man to face c hristian h ack, v alparaiso’s final reliever of the day.

Facing a 2-2 count, he pelted another ball to the opposite field for a 405foot home run.

“[ m artinez] has simplified his approach. We’ve had some discussion about what makes him good and what makes him tick, and he’s very comfortable in this ballpark,” s tiffler said. “ h e feels like he can homer to all ends of this ballpark which keeps him very centered through the ball.” m artinez now has six home runs on the year, good for second on the team.