HAMDEN — Despite a 15-9 comeback win against the visiting Yale Bulldogs on Wednesday afternoon, the message coming from the Quinnipiac Baseball dugout during the game was to not look up at the scoreboard.

“I think when you look at the scoreboard, you get timid, and you don’t want to make a mistake,” Quinnipiac baseball head coach John Delaney said.

Halfway through the Bobcats game against the Yale Bulldogs, they’d have every reason to be worried about making a mistake. Four innings in, and the home squad was down eight runs after a disastrous start to baseball’s edition of the Battle of Whitney Avenue. 

In the top of the first inning, the name of the game was capitalizing on Bobcat mistakes. Freshman pitcher Kevin Rusinak took the brunt of the Bulldog attack. After two hit by pitches and a fielding error from Rusinak put runners on the corner bases, the floodgates opened up. 

Three straight batters would make it on base to chase Rusinak, and put Quinnipiac in a 3-0 hole. The relief, freshman pitcher Joseph Hiller, wouldn’t fare much better, adding to the number of Bulldogs hit by pitch count.

A double by Ivy League Rookie of the Week, freshman catcher Bryce Miller drove in three more runs for the Bulldogs to drive the deficit to six before the Bobcats even had the chance to bat. 

To make matters worse, the Bobcats fell in order to the Bulldogs in the bottom of the inning. 

“We weren’t taking good swings,” Delaney said. “Lot of weak contact, not great plans at the plate as we did swing, bad swings, off-balance swings. If we’re gonna go down and fight, we got to go down with the right swing.”

A similar story played itself out in the second and third as Yale would put up three more runs. Quinnipiac was able to capitalize on a fielding error to advance senior first baseman Christian Smith to third, eventually leading to the lone Quinnipiac score of the first four innings. 

Four innings in, and the score was 9-1 in favor of the visiting Bulldogs. 

But the Bobcats weren’t deterred by the deficit. As Delaney said, the key remains in not looking at the scoreboard. 

“We play games like this,” senior shortstop Alex Irizarry said. “We know just keep on doing your game and then at the end, pick up your head and look at the scoreboard.”

Quinnipiac did just that. After struggling to make meaningful contact against senior pitcher Ethan Lewis through three innings, the Bobcats finally found their groove in the fifth. The Bobcats would put up their highest run total in a single inning with 11 to erase Yale’s eight-run advantage. 

The Bobcats’ 10 hits, two walks and a hit by pitch would power the Bobcats through the fifth. 

“It’s the lineup saying I’ll make the next guys at bat more important,” Irizarry said. “You have a lot of singles, a lot of walks, just doing whatever you can to just extend the inning.”

However, even with the majority of Quinnipiac’s runs coming via “small-ball” and capitalizing on Bulldog mistakes, the Bobcats would manage one bomb over the right field wall. 

In just his third collegiate game, freshman catcher Brayden Hromada would make his mark. With runners on first and second, ball would connect with barrel to sky a ball over the fence and into the batting cages. 

“I kind of blacked out rounding first, but it was great,” Hromada said. 

Delaney was the first to praise Hromada, who stepped into a starting role earlier in the season with injuries to Smith and redshirt sophomore catcher Cole Constable.

“He did a good job on defense, and he’s got some good hit tools,” Delaney said. “It’s just a matter of when he’s gonna come out.”

Within the half inning, Quinnipiac had flipped the score to 12-9. 

It wasn’t just the Bobcats’ offense that seemed to get back to their game in the fifth inning. After Yale’s offensive onslaught ended in the third, Quinnipiac’s pitchers would only allow two hits and two walks for the rest of the contest. 

In the following four innings, the Bobcats would bat in three more runs to cap off their 13-0 scoring run. 15-9 would be the final from Hamden.

“We have to play a good brand of baseball. So what we did the last eight innings, seven innings, like we have to do that brand for nine innings, and we got to do that for three games,” Delaney said. 

The Bobcats have the opportunity to play a complete game and series against MAAC opponent Manhattan this weekend. Quinnipiac travels to Pomona, N.Y., to take on the Jaspers Friday, March 20. First pitch is set for 3 p.m.