NASHUA – They are NCAA bound for the second straight year.

Yet make no mistake about it, Sunday’s 12-8, 9-7 NECC championship doubleheader sweep of Mitchell College was no easy task for the Daniel Webster College baseball team.

The wins give the Eagles their second straight NECC crown and they will head to a yet-to-be-determined site later this month to compete in the NCAA Division III tournament again.

“The experience they had last year,” Eagles coach J.P. Pyne said of his players, which includes 12 seniors, “was a big piece of their willingness to keep their nose in and keep fighting.”

And fight they did. After losing 11-2 to Mitchell on Saturday, the Eagles (28-10) faced three elimination games. They held off Becker 6-4 late Saturday, and then on Sunday at Harvey Woods Field they blew a 7-1 lead in the first game against Mitchell but rallied to break an 8-8 tie with two in the eighth and two in the ninth.

That win, in which DWC overcame five errors, set up a deciding second game during which the Eagles found themselves trailing 6-1 going into the bottom of the sixth. But they rallied for eight runs on seven hits in the sixth to take control.

“We were just hoping we could avoid any big innings,” Mitchell coach Travis Beausoleil said. “And obviously one big one got to us.”

The talk of the title game was how Mariners ace starter Tyler Shamas was doing it to the Eagles again, as he had beaten them with a complete game win on Saturday. But in the end, the talk ended up being about former Alvirne standout Zach Hurley. All Hurley (4-1) did was toss 52?3 innings of three-hit relief, allowing just one earned run, walking two and fanning six.

“I told coach Pyne before the game if he needed me I was there for him the whole day,” Hurley said. “I was just zoned in. I didn’t even think about the pressure. Just throwing strikes, zoned out.”

The Eagles other hero of the day was shortstop/closer Rich Lizotte. He went a combined 6 for 9 in the two games at the plate and picked up two saves (giving him nine on the year), allowing just an unearned run in the second game.

“It was tough,” Lizotte said about winning three straight elimination games. “There was a lot on our plate, but we’d done it before, we’d won three games in a row four times this season, so we knew it wasn’t out of reach.”

The Eagles (33 hits on the day) saw Shamas, who threw an approximate 200 pitches in a 28-hour period, run out of gas in the sixth.

Mitchell, unlike the DWC, had no Hurley to rescue it and after Shamas allowed a two-run single to Eric Bourdeau that made it 6-3, the Eagles battered two other relievers.

Josh Chasse lined a two-run single to center to tie it at 6 and Darrik Marstaller doubled in two runs to give the Eagles the lead for good.

“I got the pitch I wanted,” Marstaller said, “and just hit it where they weren’t.”

Lizotte had a key RBI double in Game 1, and other area players chipped in as Milford’s Elliot Kilgore doubled in the go-ahead run in the eighth and Hudson’s Kyle Brigham, another former Bronco, and former Campbell catcher Tyler Bonin had RBI hits in the ninth.

“It was tough,” Marstaller said of the feeling trailing 6-1 in the second game. “But I had faith in all my teammates. Coming in today, we all knew we were coming out on top.”

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