WASHINGTON – Rhode Island knocked off Davidson 4-3 in an elimination game of the 2015 Atlantic 10 Conference Baseball Championship. The Rams advance to play VCU at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday in the championship round.

URI (26-24-1) will have to beat VCU twice over the course of the next two days. A Rhode Island victory over VCU would force a deciding game on Sunday for the A-10 Championship.  Davidson finishes its first year in the A-10 with a 27-22 record.

A Derek Gardella RBI single in the first inning scored Tim Caputo to give Rhody the early 1-0 advantage.

Davidson drew back-to-back walks to start the fourth inning. The runners advanced to second and third and were brought home on a sacrifice fly by Ben Arkin and an RBI single by Cam Johnson.

Rhode Island responded in the next half inning when Martin Taveras and Nick DeRegis drew walks to start the inning. After a sacrifice bunt moved the runners into scoring position, Jordan Powell delivered an RBI single to score both and give URI the 3-2 advantage.

Powell came through in the sixth inning with a two-out RBI single that plated DeRegis to make it 4-2 Rams.

Davidson cut its deficit to one in the eighth inning when Ryan Lowe opened the inning with a walk and came around to score on a two-out single by Arkin.

That would be as close as the ‘Cats would get as Brad Applin set Davidson down in order in the ninth inning persevere the victory and record his third save of the year.

Derek Kawlewski got the win on the mound for Rhody after going six innings and giving up just two runs to improve to 1-2. Josh Smutzer took the loss for Davidson, dropping his record to 3-2 on the year.