BUTLER, Pa. – Junior first baseman John Shaffer was 2-for-3 and singled home the only Slippery Rock University run Wednesday afternoon as The Rock dropped a 4-1 decision to 14th-ranked West Chester University in first-round action of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Baseball Championships at Pullman Park.

The Rock (24-24-1 overall record) collected only five hits in the game and mounted three serious scoring threats before falling into the losers' bracket of the double-elimination tournament.

Senior catcher Matt Accardi (pictured) laced a leadoff double into the left-field corner in the top of the second inning with the score tied at 0-0. Accardi moved to third base on a ground out, but was stranded 90 feet from home plate by a strikeout and another ground out.

The missed opportunity and the others that followed came back to hurt SRU in the bottom of the fourth inning, when West Chester manufactured two runs from a pair of bases on balls, a hit batsman and a single.

Those two runs proved to be enough for West Chester (34-9) to advance to Thursday's 3:30 p.m. winners' bracket game vs. Kutztown (33-15), a 6-5 winner over Gannon in the first of four games played Wednesday.

Shaffer's one-out RBI single in the top of the sixth inning cut the deficit in half after senior center fielder Derek Carr led off the inning with a single through the left side of the infield, moved to second on wild pitch and advanced to third on a ground out.

Shaffer, after singling home Carr, advanced to second base on another wild pitch by West Chester pitcher Jordan Lehman (4-2) and moved to third base on a ground out before he was stranded there by an inning-ending ground out.

West Chester then iced the win with single runs in the bottom of the sixth and eighth innings.

Senior southpaw Zach Jeney was SRU's starting and losing pitcher. He allowed four earned runs on six hit, struck out nine, walked three and hit two batters in seven-plus innings and saw his season record fall to 3-4.

With his effort Wednesday, Jeney moved into third place on SRU's single-season strikeout list with 80 punch-outs this spring. That total trails only Bundy Fulmer's school-record 83 K's in 2001 and Mike Sikorski's 81 K's in 2003.

Sophomore right-hander John Kovalik allowed one hit, struck out one and walked one in the final inning of Wednesday's game.

The Rock, who have now lost an opening-round PSAC tournament game in five consecutive seasons, look to rebound from Wednesday's loss and extend its season one more day when they take on PSAC-Western Division rival Gannon University (25-21) in a 9:30 a.m. elimination game Thursday.

SRU, the No. 4 team in the final PSAC-West standings, and Gannon, the No. 2 team in the division standings, recorded a 2-2 split in their regular-season series.

A win Thursday, in addition to keeping alive The Rock's bid for a conference championship, would also assure the Green and White of not having their first losing season since 1994, when SRU had a 21-24-1 final record.

The winner of Thursday's Rock-Gannon game returns for a 9:30 a.m. game Friday against the loser of the Kutztown-West Chester game.