There will be at least two more games in the 2024 baseball season for Cranston natives Jake SanAntonio and Gianfranco Messina, with both players suiting up for one of the 60 schools that earned a berth in the Division III NCAA tournament.

For Cranston West product SanAntonio, this will be his first appearance on the national stage, as his UMass-Dartmouth squad clinched the Little East Conference’s automatic bid on Saturday courtesy of a 4-3 defeat of UMass-Boston in ten innings.

A ground ball off the bat of the Corsairs’ T.J. Keefe proved too difficult for Beacons’ shortstop Elliot Miles to handle, enabling Jordan Paradis to cross home with the championship-winning run thanks to a fielding error.

It was the only lead that UMass-Dartmouth held all day, clawing back one-run deficits on no less than three occasions, none bigger than a two-out single from Devyn Vezina in the Corsair half of the ninth that plated Keefe and forced bonus baseball.

The reward for UMass-Dartmouth was a relatively short trip to Boston for its regional, scheduled to take on Salisbury in the first round on Friday afternoon with the winner advancing to face either Mitchell or hosts Babson.

While SanAntonio’s postseason status was not in doubt, Messina and his Salve Regina teammates had to play the waiting game after being bounced from the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference tournament on Saturday.

Babson did the honors via an 8-1 triumph that was the Seahawks’ third defeat in their last four contests, placing their claims on a possible at-large invitation in serious jeopardy after compiling a 33-8 overall record during the season.

In the end, the selection committee determined that Salve’s body of work passed muster and assigned them to the Cortland, N.Y. regional alongside Colby, SUNY-Cortland and Washington & Jefferson, opening play versus the former on Friday.

Messina will be going into the regional having taken part in 19 games for the Seahawks, with the La Salle graduate hitting at a .333 clip with three doubles and six runs batted in, half of which came on April 24 in a 28-10 victory over Worcester State.

Conversely, SanAntonio has been a regular presence in the UMass-Dartmouth lineup, appearing in 35 contests and maintaining a .252 average at the plate while driving home 22 runners to put himself seventh on the Corsair chart.

Cranston West graduate Paige Cote’s freshman year in the pitching circle has come to a close, as Assumption bowed out of the NCAA Division II tournament after an 8-0 blanking by Wilmington in the East regional final on Sunday.

The Wildcats shut out the Greyhounds for the second time in as many days on the strength of a complete game one-hitter from Delani Sheehan, who racked up four strikeouts to claim her 18th win of the season.

Cote saw action in two games during Assumption’s regional run, emerging from the bullpen in both meetings versus Wilmington and hurling four innings of scoreless ball on Saturday in a 3-0 setback that sent the Greyhounds to the losers’ bracket.

With the curtain falling on her first campaign at the collegiate level, the ex-Falcon made 15 appearances during the spring, going 3-1 with a save and 14 strikeouts, punching out a half-dozen in an April 20 clash with Saint Michael’s.