By Jim Fenton
MARLBOROUGH, Mass. -- The Bridgewater State University baseball team has continued its run of Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference championships.
The Bears clinched their fifth straight conference regular-season title on Friday afternoon with a 6-0 victory over second-place Anna Maria College at Marlborough High School.
BSU has won the MASCAC crown outright in 2022, 2025 and 2026 and shared first place in 2023 with Framingham State and in 2024 with Framingham State and Salem State.
The record for consecutive outright or shared MASCAC titles is six, set by Bridgewater State from 1988-93. The Bears won four outright and shared two championships in that run.
The Bears (25-8, 19-3 MASCAC) will be the No. 1 seed in the conference tourney next week, looking for a fifth straight postseason championship.
Senior Trey Yesu (Monson, Mass.) pitched a complete-game, five-hit shutout to improve to 4-3 for BSU. He now has 18 career victories and has won three straight starts.
Yesu struck out seven and walked only one. He did not allow a hit in the first four innings before junior Josh Batchelder (Lake Worth, Fla.) led off the fifth with a single.
The AMCATS (25-13, 15-7 in the MASCAC) could have tied the Bears for first place by sweeping a three-game series.
BSU had 13 hits with four players getting at least two.
Senior Joshua Selander (Granby, Conn.) was 3-for-4 with two RBI and junior Rylan Secovich (Southwick, Mass.) was 3-for-5 with a pair of stolen bases and a run. Secovich now has 36 stolen bases of the season, one shy of Jason Arraiol's single-season program mark of 37 set back in 2003.
Sophomore Jamie Luna (Warwick, R.I.) was 2-for-3 with two RBI while junior Benjamin Sepeck (Whitman, Mass.) had a pair of doubles. Sepeck leads the MASCAC with 15 two-baggers this season.
The Bears took a 2-0 lead in the second inning against junior Owen Sullivan (Methuen, Mass.), who went five innings and struck out eight.
Selander had an infield hit and Sepeck doubled to left. After Selander was out t home on a fielder's choice by freshman Nick Berube (Swampscott, Mass.), Luna drove in two with a hit.
The Bears added three in the fifth inning.
They loaded the bases when Luna singled to right center, sophomore Jeyden Espinal (Fall River, Mass.) reached on an error and Secovich bunted for a hit.
A sacrifice fly by sophomore Cam Beltramini (Hanson, Mass.) made it 3-0 and Selander doubled to left-center for a pair of runs.
The final run came in the eighth when Sepeck doubled to left, went to third when senior DJ Prampin (Worcester, Mass.) reached on an error and scored on an infield hit by Berube.
BSU and Anna Maria finish the regular season Saturday at noon with a doubleheader.