By Dave Diamond

To say the Pride baseball team’s playoff hopes are fading fast would be an understatement. Fresh off a victorious three-game sweep of James Madison, Hofstra was unable to capitalize over George Mason in Virginia last weekend, a main competitor for the sixth and final playoff spot in the CAA tournament.

After Sunday’s 5-3 loss to the Patriots, Hofstra fell to 8-16 in the CAA and is currently ninth in the conference. Delaware is sixth at 10-11 and is being chased by a cluster of teams, including George Mason and Georgia State, both of whom are ahead of the Pride. Obviously, taking advantage of a mediocre team like Mason would have put Hofstra in great position to make a move on Delaware, but they were unable to build momentum.

“No one wants to think that we’re out of it, we’re still working on playing good baseball for the upcoming games, playoffs or not,” freshman Nick Panzarella said.

The Pride is at risk of missing the playoffs again after the program made great strides last year by making the conference tournament for the first time in team history. However, all hope is not lost just yet. With six games remaining, it should be remembered that the Pride needed to roll through its late schedule last year to make the tournament, much the way it needs to this year. It will take some veteran leadership, but with very little hope remaining on the season, it must be tough for the upperclassmen to swallow the Hofstra struggles.

“They’re not really down on themselves, just down about the way things are going,” Panzarella said.

In those six games left, the team needs to get hot and stop leaving runners on base. The Pride has to erase the bad memories and try to remain focused on the games at hand, not ones they let slip away.

“Now we just have to step it up and play the best we can, and see what happens and hope for the best,” Panzarella said.