The baseball team (0-7) was swept in a three-game set on the road against the University of New Orleans (7-4) this past weekend, falling by final scores of 10-3, 9-5 and 5-1. After two series, the Bears are still searching for their first win of the season.
“We haven’t played well yet — to me, that is a better place to be than if our best performance led to our current results,” Head Coach Grant Achilles wrote in a message to The Herald via Brown Athletics. “It’s back to work at being the best version of ourselves every day and striving for consistency of process rather than control over the outcome.”
Bruno jumped out to an early lead in the opening game on Friday night, scoring two runs in the top of the second inning on RBIs from Gunner Boree ’25 and Ray Sass ’23. But UNO responded quickly, plating five runners in the next two innings with the help of three Brown errors, two of which occurred on the same play in the bottom of the third.
The Privateers tacked on four more runs in the bottom of the fifth, knocking both starter Tobey McDonough ’23 and reliever Peter Dubie ’26 out of the game. It was rookie Christian Keel ’26 who stopped the bleeding, throwing 2 2/3 innings of scoreless ball in his Bears debut.
Bruno added a run with an RBI triple by Nathan Brasher ’25, but it was not enough to overcome the deficit.
In game two, UNO came out swinging, scoring eight runs across the first three frames. It appeared the game was well out of Brown’s reach when rookie Carter Rasmussen ’26, who made his debut against Georgia State the week prior, took the mound.
Rasmusen was dominant, befuddling batters to record seven strikeouts over three innings of two-hit, one-run ball, with the run coming on a wild pitch.
“Carter's outing can be summed up in one word: attack,” Achilles wrote. “He attacked with his fastball, making his secondary stuff even better … Hitting becomes a lot more difficult with that type of presence on the mound.”
“I was loose and not putting pressure on myself, so I was able to just get the pitch call, throw that pitch and beat the hitter however I could,” Rasmussen wrote in a message to The Herald via Brown Athletics. “I put my fastball on the edges of the strike zone and made them chase offspeed (pitches) out of the zone, which kept them from any solid contact.”
For his performance, Rasmussen was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week Monday.
“It's a huge honor to get recognized this early in the season, and it means that the work that we have put in is paying off,” Rasmussen wrote, though he emphasized that his focus is “on the goal of winning the Ivy League Championship.”
Rasmussen was followed by Jacob Young ’25 and Jack Seppings ’25, who each tossed scoreless innings to give Bruno an opportunity to stay competitive in what had appeared to be a blowout. The Bears took advantage of that opportunity, attempting to mount a miraculous comeback by scoring five runs in the bottom of the eighth inning off three hits and four walks.
Boree, Brasher and Reece Rappoli ’24 each contributed an RBI, while Jared Johnson ’25 picked up two RBIs on a two-out pinch-hit single.
“That inning shows that we fight to the last out,” Boree wrote in a message to The Herald via Brown Athletics. “That inning was a testament to (what) we are capable of as a team.”
“It was an important reminder for our team of what we are capable of: stringing together good at-bats, aggressive swings in the zone and sticking to our limits,” Achilles wrote.
Down 9-5 in the ninth inning, the Bears loaded the bases with one out to bring the tying run to bat, but they were ultimately unable to score.
In the series finale on Sunday afternoon, the Bears’ sole run came on their first home run of the season by catcher Jacob Burley ’23, who later caught a runner stealing on the basepaths.
Boree, who was responsible for one of the Bears’ three hits on Sunday, was an on-base machine all weekend: He reached base safely nine times via three hits and six walks over the course of the series. “I was simply looking for pitches to hit, and I didn’t get many, which led to all those walks,” Boree wrote.
The Bears will look to get in the win column during a four-game set against Pennsylvania State University this coming weekend. It will be the last of the team’s three road trips to start the season before their home opener versus Bryant University March 18.
Boree called “playing with aggression” the key to securing a victory in their upcoming games. “With the talent on our team, if we can come out of the gates firing, we should get our first win this weekend,” Boree wrote.
“None of us wanted to start off this way, but with a lot of baseball left, the path forward is to double down on what led to such a positive and productive build into the season: a consistent process and trust in competition,” Achilles wrote.
Linus is a Sports editor from New York City. He is a junior concentrating in English, and when he's out of The Herald office you can find him rooting for the Mets, watching Star Wars or listening to The Beach Boys.
