After waiting 58 years to qualify for their first NCAA Division III Baseball Championship berth, the State University of New York-Brockport baseball team made its first finals game memorable.

The Golden Eagles rode the talented left arm of senior pitcher Ben Kimball, who scattered 10 hits and allowed just two runs over eight and two-thirds innings of work as Brockport defeated Aurora University, 5-2, in the opening game of the 2004 NCAA Division III Championship Friday (May 28) morning at Fox Cities Stadium.

Facing a daunting offensive lineup in which the top five batters entered the finals hitting .330 or better, Kimball used a balanced assortment of off-speed pitches and a well-placed fastball to keep the Spartans at bay.

"He had an amazing outing," Brockport coach Mark Rowland said. "In this atmosphere - we've never been here before - he had a lot of pressure on him."

Kimball handled that pressure well, getting ahead in just about every count and relying on a stingy defense, as well as a little luck, to help him out of a couple jams.

"I felt good out there today," Kimball said. "Getting ahead of hitters is the key, I didn't have my best stuff in the beginning, I'll admit. I battled though, I had a good changeup all day, but towards the end when I was getting tired I went to my curve and that worked well."

After Aurora took 1-0 lead in the first inning, the Golden Eagles manufactured a pair of runs in their half of the frame to go up 2-1, and that's the way it stayed for a while.

Aurora starter Jeff Salzmann was equally brilliant on the mound. After the two-run first, Salzmann settled down and held the Golden Eagles at bay for the next five innings before running out of gas in the seventh.

With two on and one out in the bottom of the inning, Salzmann left a hanging curve out for Brockport shortstop Tim Wilson, who tripled to left to put the Golden Eagles up 4-1. Leadoff man Mike Ranalli followed with an RBI squeeze bunt to the shortstop, but was thrown out at second. Second baseman John Morgan followed that with a ground out to end the inning and Salzmann's day.

"[Salzmann] did a good job settling down until the seventh when he just kind of ran out of gas," Aurora coach Shaun Neitzel said. "Not to the point where I thought we had to get him out of there right then, because he had done a good job of battling, but he just hung a couple curveballs."

The Spartans came back to add a run in the top of the eighth, but couldn't get the clutch hits necessary for the win. In all, Aurora stranded nine runners on the day.

"Everybody was hitting the ball well, up and down the lines all day," Aurora right fielder Jay Lavender said. "We just couldn't buy a break. Line drives right at people . . . line drives into a double play . . . balls landing a foot foul, it just wasn't our day."

Lavender finished the day three-for-four with an RBI and a run scored, while John Hopkins and Brian Chelgren each added a pair of hits.

Offensively, while Brockport wasn't dominant, the Golden Eagles were opportunistic. Left fielder Matt Johnson was the only Brockport player with multiple hits, adding a run and RBI to his ledger.

Brockport finished with just eight hits, but with Kimball throwing effectively, that's all the Golden Eagles needed. Kimball set a school record with his ninth win of the season against no losses, and threw 133 pitches.

"That's baseball, it's a tough way to lose," Neitzel said. "But we'll come back and do it again tomorrow."

The Golden Eagles (34-13) will face the winner of the Eastern Connecticut-Manchester game Saturday afternoon, while the loser of that contest will play Aurora (26-18) in the morning.