Baseball snaps 10-game losing streak, looks for big push into homestand
Posted by The Skyliner on February 25th, 2009Stephen Lane
Staff Writer
After dropping the first 10 games of the season, the Crusader baseball team finally broke into the win column during a weekend road trip to Southern Wesleyan University.
File Photo
The first game of the series was pitcher’s duel, and the teams went into the seventh inning deadlocked with no score. The Crusaders scored three runs in the top of the seventh with a two-RBI double by David Frazier, freshman sport management, who was later driven in by Cory Hinton, senior sport management. NGU then held Southern Wesleyan to one run in the eighth to secure the 3-1 win.
Matthew Benjamin, sophomore undecided, threw seven-plus innings and picked up the win. Daniel Goodnight, sophomore business administration, got the two-inning save.
The Crusaders then looked to carry their momentum into Saturday’s doubleheader. The teams went scoreless in the first game until the third inning when pitcher Derek Fulmer, freshman business, hit a two-run homer, driving in Randy Stegall, junior business administration, who had previously reached on a walk. After that point, SWU took control of the final six innings to win the first game of the doubleheader 9-5.
Devin Vance, senior business administration, had a shaky outing of three innings for NGU, giving up seven runs on five hits, and Tanner Yarboro, freshman Christian studies, gave up two runs on two hits in 2 2/3 innings. Fulmer finished the game 3-for-4 with a homerun and three RBI.
The beginning of the second game did not start off how NGU would have liked after pitcher Michael Benjamin, sophomore undecided, gave up two runs in the first inning, but the Crusaders got on the board in the next inning on a single from Vance. Benjamin settled down and gave up two more runs in his final five innings, and the NGU bullpen shut out SWU for the final three innings.
NGU went on a scoring spree in the sixth and seventh innings with three in each frame, taking the game 7-4 and winning the series.
“The team is continuing to play hard” head coach Travis Henson said. “We battled all day and split the doubleheader, and I’m proud of our guys.”
NGU, who hosted Mars Hill yesterday, are now in a comfortable stretch in which 19 out of their next 22 games are at home. Carson-Newman College comes to Ashmore Field today for a doubleheader starting at 1 p.m.