BALTIMORE – The No. 8/7 TCNJ baseball team saw its season come to a close in the NCAA Tournament Baltimore Region championship round, losing to host Johns Hopkins, 10-3, on Sunday afternoon. Johns Hopkins entered the NCAA Tournament as the national leader in home runs, and the Blue Jays hit five more against the Lions in Sunday's victory.
 
Johns Hopkins took a 6-0 lead after five innings thanks in large part to three home runs. After scoring a pair of runs in the second inning without the benefit of a long ball, the Blue Jays went back-to-back with two outs in the fourth inning to double its lead to 4-0.
 
In the fifth, Chris DeGiacomo hit a two-run homer to right to push the Johns Hopkins lead to 6-0.
 
TCNJ, held to just a Thomas Persichetti double and a Tommy McCarthy single through its first five at-bats, broke through in the sixth. Matt Giacose led off with a double to center, and he scored one out later on Persichetti's triple to deep center. David Cardona III grounded to second to score Persichetti, pulling the Lions to within 6-2.
 
Johns Hopkins added another run in the home half of the sixth on another home run, but the Lions scored in the seventh inning. McCarthy led off with an opposite field home run that sliced inside the right-field foul pole. That made it 7-3.
 
Mike Eberle hit Johns Hopkins' fifth home run of the game in the bottom of the seventh to push the Blue Jays' lead to 8-3, and they scored two more in the eighth to make it 10-3.
 
The loss concluded the 2019 TCNJ baseball season, a year that the Lions spent the majority of the year ranked nationally and within the top-10 of both polls for several weeks. The Lions won their second NJAC title in three seasons, and they did it without trailing at any point during their 36 innings in the conference tournament.
 
TCNJ qualified for its fourth-straight NCAA Tournament, earning a regional top seed in the first year of the new NCAA Division III format.
 
McCarthy led the Lions in the regional with a .438 batting average with Sunday's home run and three doubles. Gary Otten hit .400 with a .933 slugging percentage. He had two doubles to go along with his first two career home runs. Cardona tied Otten for the team lead with two home runs.