Sundays were Miami’s favorite day of the season, putting up football scorelines in victories over Lehigh and Lafayette, 27-3 and 30-5 respectively.
The Canes hoped to continue that momentum in their rubber match against Boston College to secure their opening ACC series, but fell short 9-5.
Sophomore right-hander Tate DeRias made his fourth start of the season for the Canes, facing off against fellow sophomore Brady Miller. Both only pitched three innings, but it was two different stories for the opening starters.
Miami pounced on Miller early, carrying over the momentum from last night’s series-tying win, notching an early 1-0 lead through a Derek Williams RBI single. However, the southpaw recomposed himself, allowing no runs across his final two innings.
After an efficient first inning where he sat the side down in order, DeRias ran into trouble each of his remaining innings.
An error from left fielder Dylan Dubovik put a runner in scoring position for BC, who was swiftly brought home after a single from Esteban Garcia, his first hit of the season. After a hit-by-pitch and a double steal, Garcia scored on a groundout from Cesar Gonzalez to give the Eagles a 2-1 lead.
Gonzalez added onto his RBI total for the afternoon in the fourth, launching a three-run homer off the scoreboard in left field to extend the BC lead 5-1, knocking DeRias out of the game and marking his first collegiate homer in the process.
Across his four starts this season DeRias has not gone deeper than 4.2 innings, struggling with command and location. Whether he remains as the Sunday starter will be a situation to monitor, with manager J.D. Arteaga hinting at a possible move over the past two weeks.
Boston College elected to pull Miller early before the fourth inning — a move that immediately backfired.
In relief, lefty Jacob Burnham only managed to record one out, surrendering a homer to Williams and a two-run single to Fabio Peralta.
BC replaced Burnham with its third lefty arm of the day, John Kwiatkowski. The senior had a chance to escape the inning with the lead still intact, but his inning-ending throw ran wide on a routine grounder to the mound. Daniel Cuvet punished his mistake one batter later with a game-tying RBI single.
Despite all the momentum on the Miami side, the Canes returned the lead back to the Eagles in the fifth.
Freshman Jack Durso struggled to locate, walking all three batters he faced in the inning. Nebraska transfer T.J Coats was called in to put out the fire, but a one-out, two-run single from Gallo squashed those hopes as BC took a 7-5 lead.
Coats put up a scoreless sixth before his afternoon ended with a Nick Wang 414-foot homer to left field.
The Canes threatened in the eighth, loading the bases for Cuvet. However, his effort to trim the deficit was thwarted by BC relief pitcher Kyle Kipp, who snagged his drive up the middle to escape the inning unscathed.
Boston College added an insurance run in the ninth after loading the bases, giving Kipp a four run lead to work with to close the series out.
The righty completed his four inning save, taking down the heart of the Hurricane lineup in order to give Boston College (9-5, 2-1 ACC) the series win.
Miami (12-4,1-2 ACC) will turn the page to its first “road stretch” of the young season, traveling to Orlando to take on UCF on March 11 before a weekend series in Durham against the Duke Blue Devils.