Boston College Baseball Eliminated From Athens Regional With Second Loss to Liberty
With two outs and a runner on first and second, staring into the belly of a six-run deficit, Gunnar Johnson worked Liberty pitcher Jake Potts into a full count.
Boston College baseball had not scored since the top of the second inning, when it took a 2-0 lead over the Flames in the second elimination game of the 2026 Athens Regional, and an offensive breakthrough was due.
Apart from Saturday’s 8-4 win over Long Island to advance to Game 5 of the Regional, the past few weeks had not been kind to the Eagles in terms of generating offense, and Sunday was really no different.
With a sizzling fastball, Potts — who entered the game in the top of the fifth in relief of starter Jaxon Lucas (4 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 1 HP) — fanned Johnson to keep BC off the board for a sixth consecutive inning, and the Eagles were unable to garner more than one run in the top of the ninth to fall to the third-seeded Flames (43-20) 8-2.
With the loss, second-seed BC (37-23) was officially eliminated from the NCAA Tournament, ending its 2026 campaign for good.
In Todd Interdonato’s third year at the helm, the Eagles tied the school record for total wins and captured more conference victories (17) than any other year in program history, but their form down the stretch was ultimately not good enough to take them any further than Athens.
For the second day in a row, BC scored in the first inning to take an immediate lead.
After Julio Solier grounded out, Ty Mainolfi turned violently on a fastball in the upper zone, shipping a rocket into the trees at Foley Field to establish a one-run lead for Birdball.
A blast to get us going from Ty!
— Boston College Baseball (@BCBirdBall) May 31, 2026
📺 ESPN + pic.twitter.com/ub7vrX9lBM
Coming into the game, Mainolfi had only generated one homer the entire year.
After a scoreless bottom of the first, in which starting pitcher Brady Miller racked up two strikeouts, Gunnar Johnson brought Luke Gallo home with an RBI single to left after Gallo doubled to lead off the frame.
In the next at-bat, Colin Larson singled to right field to advance Johnson to second, and the two runners attempted a double steal — the Eagles’ first stealing attempt of the Regional.
But Johnson got tagged out after sliding too far, and Hendrickson’s groundout capped off the top of the inning with BC in front, 2-0.
In the bottom of the second, Miller fanned two more, increasing his strikeout total to four. Miller’s last two starts lasted just 1⅓ innings combined, so moving through the initial two frames with strikeouts against 60 percent of the batters he faced was likely a huge sigh of relief for the sophomore lefty.
Unlike the first two innings, however, Miller started to have trouble locating the zone in the bottom of the third, and defensive miscues made matters worse.
Liberty’s first batter, Landon Scilley, reached first and ran all the way to second on a throwing error by Solier, and the Flames got the bases loaded after Miller plunked Josh Campos and walked Tanner Marsh.
Riley DeCandido then singled to right field to knot up the score at two apiece and keep runners on the corners, and an errant pickoff attempt by Miller allowed Marsh to score.
In the next at-bat, Jordan Jaffe sent a hard line drive to deep left-center, which Hendrickson bobbled to let Jaffe reach third for an RBI triple and score DeCandido. Nick Barone continued the rally with an RBI double to right field, but the bleeding stopped for BC after he was thrown out at home on Easton Swofford’s single to left, keeping the score at 5-2 in favor of the Flames.
The Eagles were unable to return the favor in the top of the fourth, and Marsh added another run to Liberty’s lead in the bottom of the frame with a solo homer that came with two outs on an 0-2 count.
Miller then relinquished another solo homer, this time to Jaffe in the bottom of the fifth, to expand BC’s deficit to 7-2.
That deficit grew to 8-2 in the bottom of the seventh when Barone smacked an RBI single over Gallo at third to score Jaffe, which prompted BC’s second pitching change of the game — the first before the top of the sixth, when Sean Hard came in for Miller, who finished his start with 10 strikeouts.
Left-handed pitcher John Kwiatkowski entered the game with a runner on first and second and one out, and he managed to escape the remainder of the inning unscathed by inducing a flyout and a lineout.
In the top of the ninth, Mainolfi plated Esteban Garcia with an RBI single to right, but the final out of the season came right after on Nick Wang’s flyout to left field.
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Graham Dietz is a 2025 graduate of Boston College and subsequently joined Boston College On SI. He previously served as an editor for The Heights, the independent student newspaper, from fall 2021, including as Sports Editor from 2022-23. Graham works for The Boston Globe as a sports correspondent, covering high school football, girls' basketball, and baseball. He was also a beat writer for the Chatham Anglers of the Cape Cod Baseball League in the summer of 2023.
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