Saturday afternoon’s fifth inning encapsulated Smithtown East’s tremendous baseball season.
In the top half, the third-seeded Bulls loaded the bases with two outs in a tie game at No. 2 Longwood. They scored five runs, including Bobby Eck’s two-run single and an ensuing RBI single by Nick Porrello.
In the bottom of the fifth, senior lefthander Sean Fanning escaped a bases-loaded, one-out jam without allowing a run.
The inning gave Smithtown East all the cushion and confidence it needed as it held on for a 7-3 win in a Suffolk Class AAA winner’s bracket game.
“It’s been our season all year long,” Smithtown East coach Rob Christensen said. “One through nine, believe in everybody in the lineup. Bobby got up, and I couldn’t tell you how many times he’s done it all season. And that’s what I said to him, I said, ‘Bob, this is your spot,’ and that’s all we needed. We knew we needed the one big hit. He came through.”
Said Eck: “Every single person in the lineup is stepping up big in the playoffs. And we know that we can count on us – one through nine, anybody could come up big. And today, me and Porrello, it was our turn. Big two-out hits, and that was huge for us.”
Fanning (10-0) struck out five and allowed nine hits, which he limited to just three earned runs, in a gritty six-inning start. How did he escape the fifth inning unscathed?
“I just knew that when I throw strikes and I hit my spots, no one hits it,” Fanning said. “It’s been the same thing all year. That’s what I did. I just hit my spot and I got out of it with no runs, so that was great.”
Said Eck: “Sean, he’s our guy, best pitcher we got. The grit he has. He doesn’t have the fastest pitch, doesn’t have the fastest arm, but he can get outs any other way, and he showed us today what he’s made of. He’s our best guy.”
Smithtown East (20-3) will host No. 4 Sachem North in the winner’s bracket final at 4 p.m. Tuesday for the right to go to the county championship. Longwood (18-4) will host an elimination game against No. 5 Sachem East at noon Monday.
Brayden Plugues’ first-inning RBI single gave Longwood a 1-0 lead.
The Bulls took a 2-1 lead in the top of the second on RBI singles by Andrew Carbonara and Nicholas Piccoli. Longwood evened it at 2 in the bottom half after Jagger Franco (3-for-3) hit a two-out RBI single.
Longwood starter Kyle Connolly struck out two and allowed four hits over four innings.
In the fifth inning, Smithtown East loaded the bases on one-out singles by Michael DeRosa and Angelo Ciminiello and a two-out walk by Evan Schickler. Joe Koppelmann’s RBI hit by pitch and Carbonara’s RBI walk gave the Bulls a 4-2 lead before Eck and Porrello extended it to 7-2.
Plugues had a two-out RBI double in the sixth to bring the score to 7-3.
“We gave a good team in Smithtown East too much free stuff,” Longwood coach Ryan McSherry said. “And you do that with any good team, it always comes back to bite you.”
Ben Dickson joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins’ teams.