BUFFALO, N.Y. – The third-seeded Niagara Purple Eagles (21-21) fell in extra innings on a walkoff home run by the No. 2 seed Iona Gaels, 3-1, in the 2010 MAAC Championship First Round on a rainy Thursday afternoon at the Demske Sports Complex.

“It was a great game,” head coach Al Dirschberger said.  “I thought we gave a great effort and played well all the way to the last play.”

Today’s game was a rematch of May 1st pitchers’ duel between Niagara’s Julie DiMatteo (14-6) and Iona’s Sarah Jackson (16-6) in which Iona escaped with a 3-2 win. Today’s game proved to be another battle between the two as DiMatteo put her 2-1 record and 0.72 ERA in MAAC Tournament games on the line.

The game was scoreless heading into the third inning when freshman Becky Zill broke the deadlock with a solo homer to left field to lead off the inning.  It was NU’s first hit of the game and Zill’s first homer against a MAAC opponent.

After Iona (26-24) failed to score with runners in scoring positions in the third inning and with the bases loaded in the fourth inning, the Gaels got on the scoreboard in the fifth inning. Jodi Petersen singled and Eileen McCann hit a grounds-rule double to left field to put runners on second and third. Allyssa James followed with a sacrifice fly to left field which allowed Petersen to advance home and her slide narrowly beat Zill’s tag to tie the game at 1-1.

The game was delayed for 30 minutes due to rain prior to the start of the seventh inning, but it did not slow down the strong pitching performances once play resumed. 

Niagara picked up back-to-back infield singles by Maggie McDonald and Teresa Healy with one out in the eighth inning, and managed one run runner on base in the ninth inning, but was unable to score a run.

DiMatteo retired the first two Gaels batters to start the ninth, before walking Marissa Newman.  Petersen then stepped up and hit a walkoff two-run home run over the leaping Kristin Sito in left field, who landed over the fence, to win the game.

This was the second-straight first round game that went into extra innings for Niagara; NU defeated Fairfield 4-2 in 10 innings last year.

Niagara will now play in the loser bracket on Friday at 1 p.m. against the loser of the Canisius/Manhattan game.