RICHMOND, Va. – A six-run fourth inning gave No. 2 Dayton all the momentum it needed to beat No. 4 Saint Joseph's 11-5 in the consolation bracket of the Atlantic 10 Conference Baseball Championship.
 
The Flyers (23-26) broke open a scoreless game in the fourth and added five unneeded insurance runs to advance to Friday's consolation final. UD will face the loser between No. 1 VCU and No. 3 Rhode Island at 2:30 pm. Both Friday games were moved up an hour due to potential inclement weather.
 
Saint Joseph's (21-19) responded to the big UD inning with two runs in the fourth and fifth innings. But despite a pair of solo home runs from Andrew Cossetti and a 2-for-5 performance from Brendan Hueth, the Hawks, which lost the championship opener to VCU, were eliminated from the four-team tournament.
 
Dayton's fourth-inning scoring was sparked by an infield error that score Riley Tirotta. Three straight RBI hits from Mitchell Garrity, Mariano Ricciardi and Benjamin Blackwell brought home five more runs. Ricciardi had a game-high three hits.
 
Cossetti responded in the bottom of the inning with his first blast, getting one run back, and Brett Callahan added another run for the Hawks, plating Liam Bendo with a single up the middle.
 
Tirotta decided to trade round-trippers with Cossetti, hitting his own solo shot in the fifth to bring Dayton's total to seven runs, pushing the lead back to five. But two more SJU runs, crossed home in the bottom of the fifth, thanks to a bases-loaded infield error that scored Hueth. A groundout by Brandon Drapeau then scored Luca Trigiani.
 
Dayton once again responded with the long ball, this one the three-run variety by Marcos Pujols that brought Blackwell and Ricciardi home and gave Pujols a game-high three RBI.. One last UD run in the ninth, a double by Eddie Pursinger, who had scored in the big fourth inning, plated Anthony Steinhardt. This countered Cossetti's second solo homer of the game in the seventh.  
 
Bryce Hellgeth (2-0) earned the win for 2.2 innings of work with one run on two hits, two walks and two strikeouts. SJU starter Luke Smith (2-2) took the loss, for four hits and six runs (none of them earned) across 3.2 innings.