BY MICHAEL ABLER

The Patriots faced off against the Towson Tigers last Tuesday afternoon, and the result was not what they hoped for. Mason fell by a score of 14-2 at Spuhler Field, giving up 10 runs in the top of the first inning alone.

Redshirt sophomore Bryce Nightengale started the game for Mason, but he only lasted a single inning before being pulled in favor of Jakob Ryan. Nightengale was only charged four of Towson’s 10 runs in the first inning due to the plethora of errors committed by Mason’s defense.

Mason came into the game with a record of 10-17, but Towson is no better at 9-14. This was a game that many, including the players themselves, thought they’d be able to handle.

“We thought we could easily beat them, and we didn’t take the game too seriously beforehand,” junior pitcher Saul Aguilera said after the game. Aguilera relieved sophomore Matthew Yost in the middle of the sixth inning and stayed on for the seventh, but he wasn’t able to stop Towson from scoring two runs to add to their enormous lead.

Towson would go on to add two more runs in the top of the eighth to make the score 14-0. “I kept things under control until the sixth inning; I gave up a few plays at that point,” Aguilera said. The Patriots ended up using a grand total of six different Pitchers throughout the game, while Towson only used three during the blowout.

Mason managed to score two runs in the bottom of the ninth, but by then it was too little, too late for the Patriots. Sophomore third baseman Greg Popatak got the first hit of the game and had one RBI, giving him a .255 batting average on the season.

Popatak said that his first hit was “just me trying to get something going. They dominated the first inning, and we waited too long to get going.” He also added that “we need to get going a lot quicker than that if we want to start playing better.”

Popatak was one of the few bright spots of this game for Mason’s offensive.

Mason still has a lot of time to turn their season around, but with a 10-18 record through the first half of the season, they have a lot of work to do.

Aguilera added that this is “where we’ll get to see what our team is truly made of when facing adversity like this.” Perhaps the Patriots will be able to turn this around, but as Aguilera pointed out,  “time will tell.”