Brown, Severino Earn NEC Weekly Honors

The Central Connecticut baseball team is on a three-game winning streak and went on the road and swept VMI over the weekend.  On Monday a pair of Blue Devils were honored by the Northeast Conference for their efforts over the weekend.  Central in now 4-4 on the year and will host Albany on Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. on the CCSU campus.

Senior Dominic Severino was named the NEC Player of the Week and junior lefthander Cody Brown was named the Pitcher of the Week.  It is the first weekly honors this season for the Blue Devils. 

Brown was hard to hit in his lone start last week – a 4-2 road victory that clinched CCSU's series sweep of Southern Conference member VMI. He tossed 7.0 innings of three-hit ball while fanning 15 batters to notch the complete-game win. A first-inning solo homer and a fourth-inning double were the only run-scoring hits the southpaw surrendered during the 121-pitch effort. Brown remained strong late in the game, working around a seventh-inning hit-by-pitch and striking out the side to end the game. For the week, which also included a 1.0-inning relief appearance against Hartford, Brown pitched to a 0.75 WHIP and a 2.25 ERA. He averaged 2.0 strikeouts per inning.

Severino extended his season-opening hitting streak to eight games last week. The first baseman batted .500 (11-for-22) with five extra-base hits, five RBI and four runs scored during the Blue Devils' six-game schedule last week. The right-handed swinging slugger recorded multiple hits in five of his six outings and batted particularly well during CCSU's three-game sweep of Virginia Military Institute. He produced at least two hits and one run in each of the three road victories, all of which were decided by two or fewer runs. Severino's RBI double provided the Blue Devils with an insurance run in the top of the ninth inning of a 3-1 series-opening victory.

In Game 2, a 6-5 triumph, he came around to score the team's first run after leading off the second inning with a single. He later came scored the game-tying run on Corey Lerche's go-ahead homer in the eighth inning. The veteran slugger drove in CCSU's last two runs in the series finale, a 4-2 win. He connected on a run-scoring two-bagger in the third inning before launching a solo homer in the sixth.