Baseball wins

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The Xavier Musketeers take on the UConn Huskies in a Big East college baseball game at Elliot Ballpark in Storrs, CT on Friday, March 27, 2026. | Ian Bethune/The UConn Blog

Thanks to a bounceback effort from Friday starter Charlie West, UConn baseball (13-14, 1-0) picked up a win in its first Big East conference game of the year, taking down Xavier (8-19, 0-1) 3-1 in the first game of the series.

“He was very good. 
I mean, he puts up zeros,” Head Coach Jim Penders said. “He makes it interesting, you know. He got behind a bunch of hitters, but made pitches when he had to.”

After allowing five earned runs in his first start of the team’s recent West Coast trip and seven in just two innings his last time out against San Jose State, the lefty opened this one with 3.2 hitless innings.

That included an early 14-pitch battle with Musketeers right fielder Clay Burdette, who fouled off nine consecutive pitches before West secured his first strikeout of the day on his ninth attempt at the payoff pitch.

“I thought he had his change-up early in the game,” Penders said. “
He got some bad swings on that. He had a three-pitch mix today, and we haven’t really had the three-pitch mix all that often.” Penders also said that West did a good job establishing the inner third of the plate to pitch in.

Spliced into West’s dominant outing was a big fourth inning for the Huskies’ offense, coupled with some poor defense from the Musketeers.

After looping a double towards the gap in left center, Jackson Marshall found his way to third on a Chris Polemeni single and would score on a wild pitch over the left-handed batter’s box to the backstop.

“Nothing seems to bother [Marshall] in the batter’s box,” Penders said. “He is able to separate pitches really well. He could take a bad swing…and he’s very capable of looking back on one pitch and then just being able to dismiss it and get ready for the next one. And he hits the ball so darn hard.”

Marshall also found ways to contribute defensively and in an eye-catching manner. After making a running over-the-shoulder catch just feet from the brick wall down the right field line in the sixth, the first baseman dove to his left and used every inch of his 6-foot-8 frame to snare a hard grounder shot off the bat of Carter Christenson for the unassisted out at third base in the ninth.

“He was a really good basketball player,” Penders said. “I think he was in Mr. Basketball in New Hampshire his senior year. He’s more athletic than people give him credit for. His legs look a little funny, but he can move a little bit out there.”

Following his single, Polemeni swiped third after advancing to second on the wild pitch. That steal extended his team-leading total to 12.

Polemeni wasn’t done wreaking havoc on the bases. Creeping down the third base line, the right fielder was such a distraction to catcher Jonathan Fitz that the backstop made the ill-fated choice to fire to third and try for the back pick. Instead, the low throw bounced short and into foul territory past third, allowing Polemeni to ease his way into home.

The error also advanced second baseman Evan Menzel into scoring position, who later moved over to third on a Nater Wachter single. A batter later, Maddix Dalena tacked one on for good measure with a single of his own, making it 3-0 Huskies.

West responded to the run support from his teammates in the top of the fifth by inducing a double play and a fly out to keep the Musketeer bats at bay.

By the time West threw his 109th and final pitch of the day, the lefty had cruised through 6.2 innings of shut out baseball

Though the Huskies’ bats went cold for the latter four innings, collectively finding just one more hit (a Polemeni single) after the fourth and none over the next three innings, it wouldn’t matter much as Paxton Meyers and Greg Shaw III combined to close out the contest.

Meyers ran into trouble in both the eighth and ninth. A pair of singles left Meyers in a precarious situation in the former, but the right-hander generated a double play ball that elicited a loud cheer from the Huskies dugout.

The graduate student wasn’t as fortunate in the ninth. A leadoff single and a walk brought Jorge Valdes to the plate for the Musketeers. The left fielder worked a 3-1 count before Meyers got back in the at-bat to make it a full count.

Valdes lined the pitch back up the middle with enough speed to keep shortstop Rob Rispoli from reaching the resulting bouncer. The base hit drove in the Musketeers’ only run of the day.

With Meyers running into trouble and exiting the game with traffic on the base paths, relief ace Greg Shaw III came in to shut the door for his first save of the season.

Not dazed by the fact that the winning run was now standing at the plate, the senior made quick work of the Musketeers, striking out the first batter he faced and producing a soft tapper back to the mound that he flipped to first with plenty of time for the final out.

“His mindset is the thing that’s most impressive to me,” Penders said. “He’s a tough kid, he works really hard, he doesn’t say boo. He’s harder on himself than a coach can ever be, and those are the kinds of guys you love to go to war with.”

The Huskies will turn around less than 24 hours after game one’s first pitch to get back on the field for game two of the homestand with a series win on the line. UConn hasn’t won a weekend series since the three-game set at Old Dominion early in the month.

“It’s going to be a hard-fought series for sure, and I just hope that we show up with the same kind of energy tomorrow and hopefully win a series on a Saturday,” Penders said.

With the weather dropping to the low 30s, first pitch will be at an earlier 1:05 p.m. The game will stream live on ESPN+.

“It was obviously not an offensive day at Elliot Ballpark today with the wind blown in,” Penders said. “Our hitters, I thought, did a solid job of getting on top of some baseballs. It’s going to be even worse tomorrow, so we gotta continue that. 
We’re going to have to play for runs early and not count on crooked-number innings,”

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