Baseball

Bears Take 1 of 3 From St. Andrews

Box Score 1 | Box Score 2 The Truett-McConnell baseball team dropped two out of three games in their final series of the season.
 
St. Andrews 1   TMC 7
The series got off to a good start for the Bears as they got great starting pitching from Luke Henderson (5 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 K) and the offense backed him for a lopsided game one win. Truett jumped out to a first inning, 2-0 lead. Patrick Overstreet led off the home half of the first inning with a homerun off the leftfield foul pole to get the scoring started. Then, two batters later, Tate Gaines reached on an error. Michael Long came in to run for Gaines, stole second base, and came home to score on Chris Steven's RBI single to centerfield. St. Andrews cut the lead in half with a run in the third inning, but that was all the only run they could manufacture off of Henderson.

Truett struck for two runs in the bottom of the fourth inning and three more in the fifth inning with Patrick Overstreet delivering his second homerun of the game, a two-run shot to left-center. Overstreet finished 2 for 2 with two homeruns, a walk, and three RBIs to lead the offense. Austin Thomas also had a perfect day the plate by going 1 for 1 with two runs scored and a RBI in the win. Henderson picked up his seventh win of the season while Chris Carden (2.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K) came on to pitch the final two innings in picking up the save.
 
St. Andrews 6    TMC 0
St. Andrews exploded for six runs in the top of the seventh inning to take game two. The game was a pitcher's duel between Truett's Jared Oliver and St. Andrews' Brett Ayer. Oliver really had the strikeout pitch working as he struck out ten in the first three innings and finished with fourteen total. However, a leadoff walk in the seventh opened the door for the Knights to have a big inning. They first got a RBI triple with two outs that forced Oliver from the contest. Then, the next four batters followed with run scoring hits off of reliever, Caleb Jameson to blow the game wide open.

Truett had chances to score throughout the game, but could not get the big hit to do so. The best chance came in the third inning when Chris Carden hit a one-out single and Caleb Buchanan followed with a double, but the next two batters struck out to leave them both stranded in scoring position.
Oliver (6.2, 3 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 14 K) took the tough luck loss on the mound despite having one of his best pitching performances of the season.
 
St. Andrews 10   TMC 4
The Knights came from behind to take the rubber game of the series by scoring eight unanswered runs. Truett drew first blood with Patrick Overstreet's second leadoff homerun in as many days and his third dinger of the series. St. Andrews rallied to take the lead with two runs in the top of the second to take a 2-1 lead. The Bears took the lead right back in the bottom of the inning with a three-run bases clearing double from Chris Carden that scored Walker Caves, Austin Bishop, and Patrick Overstreet. The Knights came right back to tie the score in the top of the third inning with two more runs off of Truett starter, Chris Stevens.

The game remained tied at 4-4 until the top of the seventh when the wheels came off defensively for the Bears as they committed four errors in the inning which led to five runs. St. Andrew tacked on another run for good measure in the eighth for the final, 10-4 score.

 
Dropping the series was a rough way to cap off the senior day festivities for the Bears as they honored Sean Cheshire, Caleb Hardy, Jared Oliver, and Chris Stevens before the game. Nevertheless, the Bears will get another opportunity to reach the 30 win plateau on Wednesday when they travel to Toccoa to take on the Toccoa Falls College Eagles at 3 PM before heading to the AAC Conference Tournament in Kingsport, Tennessee.
 

Print Friendly Version