AMHERST, Mass. – The UMass Lowell baseball team (21-25, 10-10 AE) fell 5-4 to the Massachusetts Minutemen (22-23, 11-7 A10) in a Kennedy Cup clash on Tuesday afternoon.
 
Freshman Scott Donahue (Medfield, Mass.) went 3-5 to lead the offense and tallied one run and one RBI. Junior Brandon Fish (Londonderry, N.H.) had two hits, including his third homer of the year, to go with two RBI and one run. Freshman Sean O'Leary (Foxboro, Mass.) and River Hart (Nashua, N.H.) each tallied one hit and recorded one run and one RBI, respectively.
 
Graduate student Frankie Venezia (Lyndhurst, N.J.) fell to 2-2 on the year with the loss. Venezia went 0.1 inning with two earned runs. Junior Brendan Holland (North Andover, Mass.) went 4.0 innings with three strikeouts while senior Andres Hulfachor (Nashua, N.H.) struck out the only batter he saw.
 
The River Hawks got going early with two base runners reaching in the first two at bats. UMass Lowell got on the board in the first inning behind Scott Donahue's RBI single to left field. Brendan Holland threw a 1-2-3 first and struck out two in the second to escape a jam with runners on the corners.
 
Massachusetts tied the game in the bottom of the third with a one-out solo home run. The River Hawks answered in the fourth with an RBI double from River Hart, bringing in Donahue from second to put UMass Lowell ahead 2-1. Massachusetts made a pitching change with runners on the corners. A sacrifice fly from Fish scored O'Leary to make it 3-1.
 
The hosts responded by loading the bases in the bottom of the fourth and tallied two runs to tie the game at 3-3 with one out. Holland forced two fly outs to end the inning, but the Minutemen had evened things up. Frankie Venezia took over on the mound for the fifth before Massachusetts took a 4-3 lead behind another solo home run. The lead pushed to two runs before Jacob Jette came in for Venezia. The sophomore threw one pitch as the defense turned a double play to end the fifth.
 
Brandon Fish swung on the first pitch of the sixth and sent one to deep right field for his third homer of the season, cutting the lead to one. Jette threw a 1-2-3 frame to send the game to the seventh. Graduate student Kevin Zarnoch (Boston, Mass.) struck out one as he retired the side in the seventh to bring the offense back to the plate.
 
The offense went down in the eighth still trailing by one. Andres Hulfachor took over on the mound with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the eighth and struck out the next batter to send the game to the ninth.
 
UMass Lowell went down in the ninth and fell to 21-25 on the season. The River Hawks return to LeLacheur Park on Friday afternoon for game one of the weekend series against America East foe NJIT.