AUBURNDALE, Fla. -- The SUNY Cortland Red Dragons scored four runs in the top of the 11th inning to snap a 14-14 tie and hung on to defeat the University of Southern Maine Huskies,

18-15, in a non-conference baseball game Friday afternoon at Lake Myrtle #2 in Auburndale, Fla.

            The win was the fifth straight for the 20th ranked Red Dragons who improved to 8-4 on the season.  The Huskies, playing the first of 10 games in Florida, had their three-game win streak stopped to fall to 3-2.

            Southern Maine, which came into the game batting .423 as a team after four games, pounded out 23 hits in the loss.  Sophomore Tucker White (Deerfield, N.H.) led the attack with four singles.  Sophomore Chris Bernard (Scarborough, Maine) and juniors Anthony Pisani (Cheshire, Conn.) and Roberto Valenti (Lawrence, Mass.) had three hits apiece.  Junior reliever Dustin Stanton (Cornish, Maine), the eighth of nine Huskies hurlers used in the game, took the loss.

            Junior Matt June (Colonie, N.Y.) paced the Red Dragons' 18-hit offense with four hits.  Senior Alex Coffey (Hilton, N.Y.) had two hits, including a three-run home run in the fourth inning.

            The Huskies rallied from a 14-7 deficit in the eighth and ninth innings to force the game into extra frames.  The Huskies plated six runs in the eighth, highlighted by a two-run single by junior Lucas Marks (Orland, Maine), an RBI single from Valenti, a two-run double by rookie Forrest Chadwick (Gardiner, Maine) and an RBI single from White.

            USM tied the game in the ninth on Valenti's ground ball that brought home Bernard home with the tying run.

            In the 11th, the Red Dragons got four consecutive hits and a sacrifice fly off Stanton to score four times.  Pinch hitter P.J. Rinaldi (Bethel, Conn.) drove in two runs with a double, and later scored on a triple by Wild.  Wild later came across the plate on June's fly ball to center field.

            The Huskies got one back in the home half of the inning on Pisani's RBI single, but that would be as close as they would get.

            Southern Maine returns to action Saturday (3:30 p.m.) playing Amherst College.  Cortland will play in-state rival Rensselaer on Saturday (9:30 a.m.) in the final game of its seven-game Florida trip.

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