Baseball Goes For Three-Game Sweep After Taking Saturday Doubleheader
By Mike DeVader, Reinhardt Director of Athletic Communications & Media
HATTIESBURG, Miss. – Baseball got back on a field for the first time in a week and came away with a two-game sweep over the Crusaders of William Carey (Miss.), 2-0 and 8-3, Saturday evening at Milton Wheeler Field.
The Eagles are 8-3 and did so in Mississippi with dominant pitching and timely hitting.
"Very proud of our effort on the road today as we pitched extremely well and had some big hits when we needed it late," head coach Jonathan Burton said. We left a lot of offense on the field, so hopefully tomorrow we can cash in on those opportunities quicker and take some pressure off our pitching. We are usually more opportunistic with RISP, and at times today we just tried to do too much at the plate.
"We are excited for tomorrow; hopefully we can put it all together and finish off this series in a big way."
A Michael Convery single and an Andres Ugarte sacrifice fly was all the hometown team needed in game one, as Jordan Hampton was unstoppable on the mound with a complete-game two-hitter with five strikeouts and one walk.
Keven Jimenez was also 2-for-4 in the opening victory.
Reinhardt got on the board in game two in the top of the first, but had to come from behind later in the non-conference battle after the Crusaders finally crossed home plate for the first time on the day in the bottom of the fourth on a pair of singles to jump ahead, 3-1.
The Eagles would then score in four-consecutive frames, tying the game at 3-3 in the sixth before adding three more tallies in the top of the seventh inning on another SAC fly and a 2-run homer by Gianmarco Marcelletti.
The 6-3 advantage would move to a half-dozen runs in the eighth frame after a Jimenez base-hit and an RBI-double from Albert Mora.
Pitching continued to roll with nine innings of work from four guys – giving up just three earned runs and striking out nine.
Ethan Foley got the win in 3.2 frames of work after surrendering just one hit and striking out four.
Leading the way at the plate for the second-consecutive game was Jimenez, who gathered three more knocks and a pair of runs scored.
William Carey had five errors in defeat.
The two teams square off tomorrow afternoon in the series finale at 2:30 p.m.
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