There wasn’t much margin for error here.
Not the way it started. Not the stage it was played on.
Centennial Conference tournament baseball doesn’t give you much room to find your footing — and for Ursinus, that made the third inning everything.
Four runs. One stretch of control. A 4–2 win over Gettysburg that moved them forward and ended a postseason drought that stretched back years.
It didn’t begin clean.
Gettysburg struck first, turning early traffic into a run in the opening inning. The pressure showed up immediately — a reminder of what these games demand.
But Jamie O’Neill didn’t let it unravel.
After the early run, he settled in. Worked through contact. Managed innings instead of chasing them. When Gettysburg threatened again, he found a way out — including a double play that kept the game within reach.
That mattered.
Because the offense found its moment in the third.
Devin Fogg started it with a double. Brandon Sullivan followed with a triple — a swing that erased the deficit and reset the game. From there, Ursinus didn’t let the inning slip.
Matthew Callahan delivered the go-ahead run with a single. Luke Kopec kept the line moving. And Isaac Gesford finished it — a two-run single that stretched the lead to 4–1.
Four runs. One inning. Control of the game.
From there, it was about holding it.
O’Neill gave them what they needed — 4 2/3 innings, limiting the damage to two runs and keeping the game steady long enough to hand it off.
The moment came in the fifth.
Gettysburg scratched one back to make it 4–2 and brought the tying run to the plate. That’s where these games shift.
Alex Grehawick made sure this one didn’t.
He entered with the inning still in motion and shut it down with a strikeout. Then he stayed there — inning after inning — controlling the pace, limiting contact, and never letting the lead feel like it was slipping.
Four-plus innings. No runs. Three hits.
Not dominant in the loud sense.
Just complete.
Ursinus had chances to add on.
They loaded the bases in the fourth. Again in the seventh. Both times, nothing came from it. In a different game, that leaves a door open.
In this one, it didn’t matter.
Because Grehawick never gave anything back.
He worked a clean eighth. Then the ninth — a leadoff single, a brief opening — and then three outs. Two in the air. One on the ground.
Game over.
It wasn’t built on volume.
It was built on one inning — and everything that followed it.
For Ursinus, that was enough.
And now, they move on.
A road test against Johns Hopkins waits next — a tougher matchup, a higher seed, a different kind of pressure.
But they’ll get there because of a game that turned in one inning — and a pitching performance that made sure it held.
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