COLLEGE BASEBALL
Griffs bring hot bats to playoffs
The Canisius College baseball team hopes the third time is the charm as it enters the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament starting Thursday at Waterfront Park in Trenton, N. J.
The Golden Griffins, who have made an impressive turnaround over the past four years, are making their third straight appearance in the conference championships.
And the Griffs are hoping two years worth of experience will pay off and earn them their first MAAC title and NCAA Tournament appearance.
“For the senior class this our third time in the MAAC Tournament and for our juniors it’s their second so we’ve got a lot of confidence going into this tournament,” senior Kevin Mahoney said. “I think we’re in a good place and I think we’re on fire right now. I think that’s going to help us a lot. We’re real happy with where we’re at right now.”
Mahoney is part of a Griffs offense that has scored 10 or more runs 18 times this season with a 17-1 record under those conditions.
The senior third baseman holds a number of career records — 198 runs scored, 249 hits, 52 doubles, 47 home runs, 185 RBIs and 113 walks.
His 22 home runs this season are the most in MAAC history and rank in the top 10 nationally. He also set single-season records for the Griffs with 63 runs scored and 60 RBIs.
“He continues to grow and develop as a player,” Canisius coach Mike McRae said. “Everybody talks about him offensively but he has [18] stolen bases right now. He’s a premium defender in the field and he’s really grown as a player in every facet.”
And those numbers are nice for Mahoney, but not necessarily very consuming.
“I let the numbers go to my parents,” Mahoney said. “I don’t really look at them very often but from what I’ve seen, they’re pretty good right now. It feels good [at the plate]. I’m seeing the ball well right now especially the last couple weekends. I’m pretty comfortable in the box right now.”
For Canisius, the best news about last weekend’s three-game series sweep of Niagara was the performance of its offense.
Coming from behind late in the first game, Canisius earned an 11-10 win then went on to win the next two games, 12-8 and 17-6.
“It was the first time all year that we put three consecutive games together offensively,” McRae said of the Niagara sweep. “Every series leading up to that we’d take at least a game off. Sometimes we’d have a great pitching performance which might have saved us but there was no question that in those three games we really stuck to a very good approach and put double-digit runs on the board every day.”
The consistency is a good sign entering the MAAC Tournament.
Canisius, the No. 2 seed with a 16-8 conference mark, will play No. 3 Marist at 4 p. m. Thursday in the first round of the double-elimination tournament.
Manhattan earned the No. 1 seed while No. 4 Rider is serving as the host for the three-day championships in the home of the New York Yankees Double- A affiliate, the Trenton Thunder of the Eastern League.
“The only difference from our normal weekends is that this becomes a do-or-die situation where you can’t have a ‘well, we’ll get them tomorrow’ mentality,” McRae said. “The urgency has to be here and now, and there’s going to be some points in time during the tournament where we face adversity. If we handle that well I think we’ll have a very good chance to win it all.”
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