DAVENPORT, Fla. (March 19, 2025) – The Rutgers University-Camden baseball team jumped into the Division III Top 25 polls on Tuesday for the first time since 2016, but the Scarlet Raptors had a tough day in their return to national prominence.
 
Facing another top-ranked team on Wednesday at the RussMatt Central Florida Invitational, the Scarlet Raptors saw Babson College (Babson Park, Massachusetts) explode for 10 runs in the fifth inning, overcoming a 2-0 deficit on the way to an 11-4 victory.
 
Babson, ranked #18 in Tuesday's D3baseball.com Top 25 poll and #26 in the first ABCA regular-season poll of the year, improves to 7-2. Rutgers-Camden, #19 in the D3baseball.com poll and #25 in the ABCA rankings, falls to 11-3.
 
The Scarlet Raptors took an early 2-0 lead with single runs in the first and third innings. In the opening frame, junior second baseman Frankie Romond tripled and scored on a wild pitch. In the third, senior third baseman Ryan Nutley singled and eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by senior shortstop Billy Richards.
 
That lead held up until the fifth inning, when the Beavers sent 15 batters to the plate and exploded for 10 runs on six hits, two walks, two hit batsmen and two errors. The inning included two-run singles by senior left fielder Walter Sadowski and a pair of graduate students, second baseman Tanner Santos and third baseman Brant Savage.
 
The Beavers added a single run in the sixth inning before the Scarlet Raptors scored once in both the seventh and ninth innings.
 
Rutgers-Camden's 12-hit attack was led by Salazar, who went 2-for-3. Both Petrick and Nutley went 2-for-4.
 
The Scarlet Raptors face Saint John's University (Collegeville, Minnesota) in another RussMatt game on Thursday. The game will be played at 3:45 p.m. in Davenport, Florida.