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The Southampton offense has flourished and it’s floundered, but for the great majority of the regular season, the starters at the top of its pitching rotation have been terrific. In game three of its Hampton Division semifinal series against North Fork, it was Patrick Peterson’s turn to turn heads and did he ever.

The lefthander from Temple carried a one-hitter into the eighth inning and finished with 12 strikeouts in leading the Breakers to a 3-2 triumph over the Ospreys, landing the team its first-ever berth in the division championship series.

There it will lock horns with Riverhead, from which it took five of seven games this summer. Southampton will host game one of the division championship series on Wednesday at Stony Brook Southampton (4pm). It then shifts to Riverhead High School for game two Thursday, and if necessary, the two sides will duke it out in a winner-take-all game three on Friday.

The series victor will need to win two more games before it can claim the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League crown. In the Wolff Division, North Jersey and Trenton begin their best-of-three series Wednesday as well, while Staten Island holds a 1-0 series lead on the New York Atlantics in the Kaiser Division series. The division winner with the worst winning percentage will then travel to the division winner with the second best winning percentage for the ACBL semifinal Saturday, and the victorious team there will advance to the ACBL final on Sunday.

The division had been tight during the regular season, and the semifinals continued on the same course, with five games being settled by a total of eight runs. Both of Southampton’s wins over the Ospreys came by a single run, with Paul Paez (Rio Hondo JC) leading the Breakers to victory in game one. With Tuesday’s win, it marked Southampton’s first trip to the Hampton Division championship series.

It didn’t do it with much offense as it mustered just four hits against the duo of Justin Hepner (San Diego State) and Caleb Oleson (Dominican). The Breakers grabbed a 2-0 lead in the third when Rob Fonseca (Northeastern) belted a two-run homer to center field. In the seventh, Brenton Allen (UCLA) singled to bring in Vinny Zarrillo (Rutgers) with what ended up being the game-winning run.

North Fork didn’t get to Peterson until the eighth when back-to-back errors put the Ospreys in business. Alex Perez (Virginia Tech) had led off the inning with a double, and he was able to score when Dillon Bryant (San Diego State) reached on an error. Another fielding mishap put runners at second and third with no one out, and Vinny Citro (Siena) closed the gap to 3-2 with an RBI single. Unfortunately, the base hits by Perez and Citro represented just their second and third hits of the night.

Peterson limited North Fork to just the two, retiring Robb Paller (Columbia), Ryan Burns (Virginia Tech) and Eric Romano (Franklin Pierce) consecutively to end the threat. The sophomore pitched a 1-2-3 ninth, striking out Perez looking to officially push Southampton through to division title series.

Hepner wasn’t bad himself, giving up two earned runs over seven innings and striking out eight.