Who else but Brayden? 

Two days after hitting a pinch-hit walk-off single, Freshman Brayden Martin repeated the feat Sunday to give Maryland (18-6) a 5-4 win over Michigan State (9-12) and clinch the series victory at Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium. 

Martin, who hit leadoff on Sunday, was 3-for-5 with a pair of RBIs in the finale of his first Big Ten series.

“I feel like I have a lot of confidence and my teammates always help,” Martin said after the game. “They bring me up when something goes wrong. I feel like they believe in and I believe in myself

Heading into the eight inning the Terps were down 4-1 and were stuck in an offensive slump, but just as the “Cardiac Terps” have done all season, they stormed back. 

Alex Calarco, who started at catcher for the first time this season, started the two-out rally with an RBI single that scored Sam Hojnar and pushed Kevin Keister to third. Moments later Keister took advantage of a wild pitch to cut the Michigan State lead to one run. After a pair of walks, Martin came to the plate with the bases loaded, where he walked on four pitches to tie the game. 

Despite scoring three runs and having eight hitters come to the plate, the Terps only accrued two hits in the inning.

“We get someone on and we end up pushing through with two outs and put the pressure on them, and that’s what good teams do,” head coach Matt Swope. “If you’re going to beg for every single hit, if you’re going to whine and complain about that stuff, it’s not going to go your way, and none of them did that.”

Logan Berrier, who pitched the ninth and 10th innings, got his second win of the weekend and is 5-0 this season. 

Sunday’s win secured Maryland’s 16th consecutive weekend series victory and 23rd straight against conference opponents. The last time the Terps dropped a weekend series was in February 2023, when it fell to an Ole Miss team that was ranked fourth in the country at the time and the defending national champions. Maryland was last bested by a Big Ten foe in April 2021 when it dropped two-of-three to Nebraska. 

Joey McMannis got the start for Maryland on the mound. For the first four innings, the freshman was impeccable, only allowing two hits. However, Michigan State’s Christian Williams punched the first pitch of the fifth inning over the left field wall for the Spartans first run of the game. The following inning, after Kevin Keister made an error on a ground ball to load the bases with one out, Ryan McKay singled home two runs. 

McMannis was removed after the inning with a final line of six innings pitched, a career high, three runs allowed (two earned) and two strikeouts. 

“He’s got some of the best stuff on the team,” Swope said. “Just getting his tempo up, letting him feel the rhythm and then him feeling the confidence, then everybody else feels the confidence, then the fielders feel it … then you start to feel like you’re rolling, that’s when you start to become unstoppable.”

The freshman was replaced by fifth-year pitcher Alex Walsh, who had not given up a run in nearly a month. His second batter homered, making the Maryland deficit three runs and the first run Walsh had allowed since Feb. 28. It was the only run Walsh gave up over two innings pitched.

Maryland goes on the road to play Georgetown on Tuesday at 4 p.m. before traveling to Ann Arbor to take on Michigan over the weekend.