Baseball Swept at Elon in Conference Opening Weekend
3/11/2012 9:54:00 PM | Baseball
ELON, N.C. - The Georgia Southern Baseball team dropped the series finale 7-6 in extra innings and was unable to salvage a game in the conference opening weekend against Elon. The Eagles pushed across six runs and took advantage of four errors before the Phoenix walked off with the win on a Ryan Kinsella single in the 11th inning.
An error to lead off the frame came around to score the game-winning run for Elon (10-5, 5-1) after Quinn Bower stole second base and reached third base on a ground out to the left side. Georgia Southern (7-9, 0-3) was swept for the first time since at UNCG last April 29th to May 1st.
The Eagles cut down on their strikeouts and jumped ahead early with a 6-3 lead after Justin Hess (Panama City, Fla.) and Jared Cheek (Buckhead, Ga.) combined to allow six hits and three runs over 4.2 innings to start the game. Eric Phillips (Carrollton, Ga.) had the only multi-hit game for the Eagles and drove in two runs while extending his hit streak to 17-games.
Elon went to the bullpen early as well and got a combined 7.1 one-run frames from their bullpen. Grant McCoury threw three scoreless innings to keep GSU off the board. Nate Young (2-0) walked three batters but pitched two hitless innings to earn the win. Will Middour (Atlanta, Ga.) (0-2) was tagged with the loss after allowing two hits to Ryan Kinsella. Middour went 4.2 innings out of the pen and allowed one earned run on 67 pitches.
Georgia Southern struck first for the third time in the series and scored two unearned runs on a dropped fly ball in right field and a double off the bat of Phillips. Scooter Williams (Detroit, Mich.) drove in a one-out walk of Tyler Avera (Baxley, Ga.) and later scored on Phillips' hit.
Elon responded with three runs in the bottom half of the frame to take a 3-2 lead. An RBI triple from Jake Luce plated Sebastian Gomez, who reached on an infield single with one out. Alex Swim tripled on a ball into the right field corner and scored on a wild pitch after Alex Swim plated a run with a sacrifice fly to center field.
The Eagles came back with three more runs in the fourth inning. Back-to-back RBI singles from Avera and Stryker Brown (Dalton, Ga.) drove in the first two runs before a sacrifice fly off the bat of Williams scored the other run. Brent Pugh (Atlanta, Ga.), making his first ever start at catcher, walked with one out to load the bases after a walk and a single from Ben Morgan (Evans, Ga.).
The Phoenix tacked on three more runs to tie the game at 6-6 on one hit. Ryan Kinsella jumped on the first pitch he saw from Middour and plated three runs after a pair of walks from the bullpen opened the frame. The sophomore pitcher retired the next three batters and faced just one over the minimum in the final two innings of regulation to help send the game to extra innings.
Georgia Southern remains on the road and will face Wake Forest at 4 p.m. on Tuesday.
All games can be heard on Boomer 103.7 FM and inside the stadium on 88.1 FM. Audio for all games is also available on the web and subscription video is available for all home games at GeorgiaSouthernEagles.com/Eaglevision.
Fans can follow their Eagles at GeorgiaSouthernEagles.com or receive short updates at facebook.com/GSAthletics, twitter.com/GSAthletics or on Google+ at gplus.to/GSAthletics.
