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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
GRAND CHUTE, Wis. – As late-inning rallies go, this one was a rally Chapman could have done without. Trailing 3-0 in the bottom of the eighth inning, Wheaton College (Mass.) rallied for four runs in their final at-bat – including a three-run home run from Pat O’Connor – to eliminate the Panthers from the NCAA Division III baseball national championships at Fox Cities Stadium on Monday afternoon. Wheaton (42-9) advances to the championship round of the tournament where it will have to beat Marietta College (Ohio) twice on Tuesday to claim the title. Meanwhile, Chapman (33-13) finished in third place, marking its third top-three finish in five trips to Wisconsin in the past seven years. The Lyons hadn’t made noise against Chapman pitching in 16 innings, before finally scoring their first run in two games off of the Panthers’ starter Wayde Kitchens in the eighth. The freshman right-hander followed Devin Drag’s shutout on Saturday night with his own mastery, allowing just five hits and striking out seven in seven shutout innings, including striking out the side in order in the seventh. Wheaton’s eighth inning began with a hint of bad things to come, a leadoff triple and scoring ground ball to cut Chapman’s lead to 3-1. Following an error and a walk, Kitchens was relieved by the nation’s ERA leader Drag, who got the first batter to ground into a fielder’s choice. But with two outs and two on, the Lyons got one big swing from O’Connor to give them the lead for good. Chapman took an early 1-0 lead in the first inning when sophomore Jarrod Sammet doubled and scored on an RBI ground out by Tyler Dean. The Panthers scored two more in the fifth on a Lyons error and an RBI single from Brian Brubaker. Senior John Alexander and freshman Patrick Ohail each went 2-for-4 with a double to lead Chapman offensively.
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