Little Falls, NJ -- The UMBC Baseball team staged a furious late rally, but stranded the tying run in scoring position in each of the final two innings as it fell, 7-6, at NJIT in an America East series opener on Friday.

Anthony Mascuilli continued the torrid start to his career, going 3-for-5 with two RBI, but UMBC was undone by five unearned runs on three errors.

The Retrievers were down 7-3 in the sixth before Matthew Best scored on an error to make it 7-4. Best, who scored two runs and also stole a pair of bases, then had an RBI groundout in the eighth, before Luke Buscaglia RBI double trimmed the deficit to one. 

Leewood Molessa, Danny Wyatt, Derek Paris and Kyle Eddington also had hits for the Dawgs. Emmett Tolis allowed an unearned run and struck out two in three innings of relief, while Nick Remy entered in the eighth with a runner on and retired all three batters he faced, two via strike out.

The second game of the series will be at 11 a.m. on Saturday.