GRAND CHUTE, Wis. - The Chapman University baseball team has been doing it with its youth all season long and on Sunday, with its season on the line, the youngsters came through once again. The Panthers defeated Wisconsin-Whitewater 4-2 in an elimination game at the NCAA Division III baseball championships at Fox Cities Stadium, thanks to a complete game five-hitter from sophomore RHP Christian Maietta and three runs batted in from freshman IF Troy Newman.

Chapman (35-12) will play Buena Vista (Iowa) on Monday at noon (CDT) in another elimination game. Chapman is one of four teams remaining in the finals.

Maietta was outstanding for the Panthers and when they needed it most. The sophomore was efficient although he struck out just one batter. Through the first six innings he allowed just three hits and erased each baserunner with three pickoffs and a double play ball. The righty improved to 6-2 while tossing his second complete game of the year.

With the game scoreless in the fourth inning, the Panthers put up single runs in each of the next three innings to take a 3-0 lead. First Chapman loaded the bases without hitting the ball out of the infield, benefiting from two Warhawks errors and an infield single by sophomore OF Charlie Piro. With one out, Newman brought home the first run of the game with a sacrifice fly.

Chapman added to that an inning later on another sacrifice fly, this time from senior IF Tyler Hadzinsky. Freshman IF Mark Saatzer led off the inning with a single and advanced to second on an error. Saatzer then took third on a wild pitch setting up Hadzinsky for the run-scoring fly.

With one out in the sixth, sophomore IF Tyler Surnbrock tripled to the left-centerfield gap and scored on a perfectly executed suicide squeeze play by Newman to give the Panthers a big insurance run. Piro and Surnbrock led Chapman each with two of the team's eight hits.

Maietta's only blemish came in the seventh inning after surrendering a leadoff single to Whitewater IF Andrew Eichstaedt. Two batters later, IF Jeff Donovan took the Chapman starter deep to left for an opposite field home run that cut the Chapman lead to 3-2.

Newman struck again in the eighth with a two-out RBI single that plated sophomore OF James Parr with Chapman's fourth run of the game and Whitewater (37-12) went quietly in the ninth.

The Panthers avenged being eliminated by the Warhawks back in 2008 by knocking them out of the championships this year in front of a predominantly Whitewater-based crowd of 1,656 on Sunday. It was Chapman's first win in three meetings against Whitewater – all at the finals in Appleton, Wis.

by Doug Aiken
Sports Information Director

Boxscore: http://www.chapmanathletics.com/sports/bsb/2010-11/boxscores/20110529_rzn9.xml
NCAA Tournament Page: http://www.ncaa.com/sports/baseball/d3