By Rebecca Castagna, QBSN Staff Writer

Early in the first inning of their final matchup against Quinnipiac, Sacred Heart took the lead with a leadoff home run from Keaton Flint.

Quinnipiac (10-15, 5-7 NEC) failed to come back during the game, finishing their four-game series against Sacred Heart (12-13, 8-4 NEC) with a 19-1 loss.

“You’ve got to respond to challenges,” Quinnipiac head coach Dan Gooley said. “The game of baseball is very difficult … you’ve just got to maintain the mental side of the house in baseball and respond and we didn’t.”

Flint went 5-for-7 on the day for the Pioneers. He tallied up two home runs, a double, six RBI and five runs scored during the game, a challenge the Bobcats were unable to respond to.

“That was a good, old-fashioned, country rear-end kicking,” Gooley said.

The Bobcats totaled six hits for the game, as well as six pitching changes.

“When guys are not getting people out and you got to go through an entire bullpen to do it, you do it,” Gooley said. “You just got to use everybody who you have to use in order to win a game.”

But a four-run fifth inning and a seven-run eighth inning from the Pioneers proved to be too much for the Bobcats’ pitchers to handle. The Pioneers’ Brian Lamboy went 3-for-4 with one RBI and two runs, and Dave Bositure went 4-for-6 with two RBI and two runs.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, a Vince Guglietti (East Haven, Conn.) RBI single brought Brian Ruditys (Boothwyn, Pa.) home in the bottom of the eighth inning. This was the Bobcats’ first run since the sixth inning of Friday’s game.

“Our key is our ability to pitch and play defense and get some timely hitting which we’ve done up until this weekend,” Gooley said. “We just have to snap back to that.”

Quinnipiac looks to snap back as it heads to Kingston, R.I. for a non-conference matchup against Rhode Island on Tuesday, Apr. 9 at 3:30 p.m.