Box Score 1 |
Box Score 2 Nashville, Tenn. ? Stetson could not overcome defensive woes or a motivated Bruins pitching staff and fell short in both ends of Saturday's doubleheader against Belmont University in Nashville (13-6 and 11-5).
After Belmont jumped out to an early lead in the first game, Stetson's Jeremy Cruz (Miami, Fla.) struck back with his 12th home run of the season, a line drive over the left field wall in the top of the 3rd. Casey Frawley (New Haven, Ct.) was on base after a single to left, so the score was 5-2.
Unfortunately for Hatters fans the Bruins answered with two runs in the bottom of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th innings.
Stetson did score a run in the top of the 5th on an Aaron Crittenden (Fort Myers. Fla.) sacrifice fly scoring Justin Bass (DeLand, Fla.), and another in the top of the 6th when Bass singled and knocked in Jeff Simpson (Valrico, Fla.) who had singled with one out in the inning.
The Hatters then added a pair of runs in the 7th inning but it wasn't enough, and in the end they dropped game one.
Stetson scored three runs in the first inning of game two. Jeff Simpson led off with a walk and advanced to 3rd base on a double to left-center by Jeremy Cruz (Miami, Fla.). Both players scored on a single to right field by Crittenden. Bass reached base on a fielder's choice, stole second base and scored on an RBI infield single by Frank Florio.
The Bruins answered with three runs on three hits in the bottom of the 2nd inning and then scored four more in the 3rd highlighted by Derek Wiley's (Dublin, Ca.) third home run of the day.
With one out in the top of the 4th Frank Florio (Long Valley, NJ) hit the second home run of his young career to bring the Hatters one run closer. Josh Clendenin (Atlanta, Ga.) followed with a double to center field and scored when Sean Emory (Miami, Fla.) tripled to the wall in right-center to make the score 7-5.
The Bruins ended up outscoring the Hatters 4-0 the rest of the way to sweep the doubleheader.
Stetson is now 15-20 overall and 6-11 in A-Sun play while Belmont is 11-20 overall and 8-12 in conference. Both teams will take the field again tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m. (ct), 2:00 p.m. in DeLand for the third game of the series. Hatters fans can hear all the action on Hatter Vision audio with play-by-play provided by the voice of Stetson baseball Bill Topping.
