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BC Bulletin

Boston College Baseball Unravels Late, Falls to Liberty in First Game of Athens Regional

The Eagles carried a 3-2 lead heading into the top of the ninth inning before collapsing.
Graham Dietz|
@BCBirdball via X.

For the first time since the second game of its series against NJIT on May 10, everything looked to be going Boston College baseball’s way.

Thanks to Jack Toomey’s solo homer in the bottom of the eighth, the Eagles carried a 3-2 lead into the top of the ninth in Friday’s matchup with Liberty in Game 1 of the 2026 Athens Regional.

BC scored its initial two runs off solo homers as well, and both came off of Julio Solier’s bat — surprising given that he only totaled one home run all season leading up to the NCAA Tournament, the program’s first since 2023.

But from that moment on, the No. 2-seeded Eagles were unraveled in excruciating fashion.

With righty reliever Gavin Soares on the bump, the third-seeded Flames initiated their comeback effort with a leadoff single for Tanner Marsh, followed by Riley DeCandido’s double to center, which advanced Marsh to third.

Jordan Jaffe grounded into a fielder’s choice to score the tying run in Marsh, and Jaxon Sorenson plated the go-ahead run in DeCandido with a grounder to short.

All Solier needed to execute was a decent throw to home, but the play got away from him, and Johnson dropped the ball as Sorenson slid into home plate to make it 4-3 in Liberty’s favor.

In the bottom of the ninth, closer Cooper Harrington beamed Johnson in the leadoff slot, and pinch runner Esteban Garcia advanced to second on Ben Williams’ sacrifice bunt. But Carter Hendrickson and Solier both flew out, handing the Flames (42-19, 21-9 CUSA) the 4-3 triumph over BC (36-22, 17-13 ACC), which has now lost seven of its last eight.

With the loss, the Eagles are now set to play in Saturday’s elimination game at noon against either No. 3 Georgia or Long Island depending on the outcome of Friday’s matchup between the schools.

In similar fashion to his last two outings, the beginning of A.J. Colarusso’s start for BC was not too promising.

Liberty grabbed the initial two runs of the game in the top of the first on back-to-back RBI singles for Jaffe and Sorenson, which put the Eagles at a disadvantage from the get go.

After surrendering those two runs, however, Colarusso locked into an impenetrable zone, racking up five strikeouts with no runs allowed in the following six frames to keep BC afloat.

On the other hand, Conference USA Pitcher of the Year Ben Blair — who finished the start with seven strikeouts and scattered only eight hits — was keeping the Eagles’ lineup in a firm grip until the bottom of the fifth, when Solier homered to right-center with one out to make it 2-1.

Then, after a scoreless 1½  innings, Solier piped a second straight solo homer off Blair to knot the score up at two apiece.

After Soares’ first inning of relief, in which he garnered three strikeouts, the Eagles grabbed the lead on Toomey’s homer — which flew over the right-center fence by what appeared to be less than a few inches — against reliever Tyler August in the bottom of the eighth.

But the Flames wasted no time lodging the dagger into BC with the pair of runs in the top of the ninth, and Hendrickson nor Solier could bring the tying run home in the bottom of the frame.

In the Eagles’ last NCAA Tournament appearance, in 2023 at the Tuscaloosa Regional, they also dropped their first game with an 11-10 loss to Troy before winning the next two and making the Regional final, so BC’s dugout — which consists of players from that squad — must have hope that it can pull off something miraculous once again.

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Graham Dietz
GRAHAM DIETZ

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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