Turns out, all Swarthmore needed was one of those innings.
The second-seeded Garnet erupted for five runs in the second inning Thursday and never looked back, holding off third-seeded Haverford, 8-5, in the Centennial Conference Tournament opener. With the win, Swarthmore punched its ticket to Baltimore, where it will face No. 1-ranked Johns Hopkins on Saturday — and maybe, just maybe, crash the championship party on Sunday.
But first, about that second inning.
Swarthmore fell behind 2-1 early, but then came a bottom of the second that Haverford won’t soon forget (or maybe will want to). The Garnet loaded the bases, got a sac fly from Nathaniel Kittredge, a bases-loaded walk to Leor Kedar, and then Aidan Sullivan cleared them all with a triple to right-center. Matthew Silvestre added an RBI single, and suddenly it was 6-2 — a lead the Garnet would nurse the rest of the way.
Sullivan finished 2-for-5 with three RBIs and two runs, while Silvestre went 2-for-3 with a double, two RBIs, and a run. And Brad Johnston? All he did was homer for the fifth game in a row — a two-run blast in the seventh that gave Swarthmore some much-needed breathing room.
On the mound, Noah Potholm was steady, tossing seven innings for his seventh win. Zach Potthoff closed it out over the final two frames, picking up his second save — and perhaps his biggest claim to fame of the day: the two combined to hold Haverford’s star leadoff man, Harry Genth, hitless (0-for-5), snapping his eye-popping 34-game hit streak.
The turning point: After Haverford sliced the deficit to two with a seventh-inning homer, Johnston responded with his latest moonshot to left, pushing the lead back to four and quieting any comeback noise.
The next stop: Baltimore, where the Garnet will take on Johns Hopkins, the top-ranked team in the land, with a trip to the championship on the line. Haverford, meanwhile, will face McDaniel in an elimination game on Saturday.
