AUBURN, Ala. – In a winner's bracket matchup between the Auburn Regional's No. 3 and No. 4 seeds, Cole Zaffiro turned in a masterful performance on the mound as the fourth-seeded University of Pennsylvania baseball team picked up a 5-4 victory against third-seeded Samford Saturday night at Plainsman Park.
 
The Quakers scored five runs in the first five innings, holding on in the bottom of the ninth behind a clutch defensive play to end the ballgame.
  
Quaker Notemeal
* Penn picked up two NCAA Regional wins in the same season for the first time in program history; the Quakers entered this year's with three wins all-time in NCAA play (1988, 10-6 over Southern; 1989, 7-1 over Illinois; 1990, 5-3 over Cal-Santa Barbara).
 
* Penn is the first Ivy League team to win its first two games at a regional since the NCAA went to a 16 four-team regional in 1999.
 
* It marks the second straight year an Ivy team has won twice at a regional (Columbia in 2022). Other Ivies to win multiple games in regional play were Yale (2) in 2017 and Columbia (3) in 2015.
 
* Saturday marked the first game all-time between the Quakers and the Bulldogs.
 
* Penn's pitching staff surpassed 500 strikeouts in a season for the first time in program history. The previous record was 485, set by last year's team.
 
* Zaffiro took a shutout into the eighth inning and tossed a career-high eight innings without yielding a walk, allowing two runs on four hits while striking out eight.
 
* Penn picked up its 34th victory of the year, breaking the program single-season record set by the 2022 team.
 
* The Quakers ran their winning streak to 10 games, the longest for the program since winning 11 in a row from March 27 to April 6, 2014.
 
* Cole Palis finished 1-for-5, reaching base safely for the 37th straight game.
 
* Wyatt Henseler recorded an extra-base hit for the 13th straight game, finishing 2-for-4 with two runs and an RBI.
 
How It Happened
With one out in the first, back-to-back singles from Appel and Henseler set the stage for Miller, who blooped one into right-center, scoring Appel and sending Henseler to third. Baker followed with a groundout to first, scoring Henseler.
 
After Zaffiro set down the Bulldogs in order in the first, the Quakers offense tacked on another run in the second.
 
With one out, Seth Werchan reached on a bunt single, his second bunt hit of the Regional, then stole second. With two out, Palis brought Werchan around with a line-drive shot back up the middle, putting the Red and Blue up 3-0.
 
After a quiet third and fourth, Appel, Henseler and Miller added on in the fifth. With one out, Appel singled to left, later coming around to score on a two-out double by Henseler to the deepest part of the park in left-center. Miller followed with a Henseler-scoring single to left.
 
Samford kept Penn off the board for the final four innings, but Zaffiro was dominant, retiring the first 10 Bulldogs and facing the minimum through five. He ran into minor trouble in the sixth, when two runners reached on a pair of errors, but the first team All-Ivy selection escaped the threat with his sixth strikeout of the night.
 
The quest for a shutout ended on a two-run homer by Garrett Staton in the eighth, but Zaffiro got the final out of the inning to keep the lead at three runs.
 
The Quakers went down 1-2-3 in the top of the ninth, setting the table for the bottom of the inning with a 5-2 lead.
 
Edward Sarti came into the game to relieve Zaffiro, looking to earn the save but put the first three runners on base via two walks and a hit by pitch to load the bases. 
 
David Shoemaker took over, allowing a run on a groundout and another on the final play of the game, but clutch defense prevented the Bulldogs from overtaking the lead, holding on for the 5-4 win.

Up Next
Penn will face the winner of an elimination game between Samford and two-seed Southern Miss tomorrow night at 9 p.m. EDT/8 p.m. CDT. With a win, Penn would win the advance to the Super Regional round next weekend.