BOX SCORE WEST HAVEN, Conn. – The University of New Haven baseball team stands just one win away from its first-ever Northeast-10 Baseball Championship after a 9-5 win over Le Moyne this afternoon at Frank Vieira Field. Joe Romanelli (Baldwin, N.Y./Holy Trinity) drove in three runs in the victory.
 
The Chargers (32-13) will host Merrimack (29-18) in tomorrow’s Northeast-10 Championship Final beginning at 11 a.m. As the lone undefeated team in the double-elimination tournament, New Haven needs to win one game while the Warriors, who won two elimination games today, will need to take a pair of victories.
 
Romanelli hit a pair of doubles for New Haven in his 2-for-5 day with three RBI and a stolen base. Chris DeMorais (West Hartford, Conn./Conard) had three hits – including a two-bagger – while Stephen Clout (Bristol, Conn./Bristol Eastern), Zach Collett (Westbrook, Maine/Westbrook) and Brendon Buckley (Monroe, Conn./Masuk) had two base-hits apiece.
 
John Melville (Ulster Park, N.Y./Kingston) worked the first four innings on the mound for the Chargers, allowing one earned run on one hit. Southpaw Joey Royer (Westbrook, Maine/Cheverus) took over and worked the final five frames, scattering two runs on six hits to earn the relief win and move to 4-3.
 
New Haven never trailed in the game, scoring two unearned runs in the first frame and tacking on three more in the second on a Brendan O’Reilly sacrifice fly and a two-run double by Romanelli. After Le Moyne plated a pair in the top of the third stanza, the Chargers took one back on Buckley’s run-scoring triple with in the home half of the inning.
 
An infield hit by Collett knocked in a run in the bottom of the fourth, and an error on the play allowed a second run to score. Romanelli’s second two-bagger of the day extended the cushion to 9-3 in the fifth, and Royer worked around two runs in the ninth to cap off the 9-5 win.
 
Casey Cannon took the loss for the Dolphins. The right-hander started on the hill and ceded six earned runs on 12 hits and four walks while striking out seven batters in five innings of work.
 
The winner of tomorrow’s NE-10 Championship Final will earn the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA East Region Championship. The Chargers are also in the hunt for an at-large bid as the No. 6 ranked team in the most recent NCAA East Region Rankings.