Baseball

March 17, 2007

Baseball Splits Doubleheader With #23 Lenoir-Rhyne

SALISBURY, NC -- Catawba and 23rd-ranked Lenoir-Rhyne battled to a split of a South Atlantic Conference baseball doubleheader on Saturday afternoon at Newman Park.  Lenoir-Rhyne won the oener 5-4, while Catawba salvaged the split with a 3-0 victory in game two.  The Catawba Indians now stand at 17-12 overall and 7-7 in the SAC, while the Bears are 25-6 and 6-3.

In the opener, Lenoir-Rhyne’s Josh Keller (Catfish, NC) pitched three and two-thirds innings of scoreless relief for his fifth save of the year as the Bears held on for the win.  Trailing 2-1 after four innings of play, L-R struck for four runs in the top of the fifth inning highlighted by Jordan Ackley's (Walnut Cove, NC) two-run single which proved to be the game-winner.

A Catawba error led to two more runs which put the Bears on top by a 5-2 score and gave Lenoir-Rhyne a lead it would not relinquish.   Catawba's David Thomas (Winston-Salem, NC) finished with two home runs and three RBI and Catawba cut the margin to 5-4 after six innings, but Keller kept the Tribe off the scoreboard the rest of the way.

Jesse Jordan (Englewood, FL) improved to 4-2 on the year for Lenoir-Rhyne with the win, while Catawba's Blake Ketner (Davidson, N.C.) fell to 2-5 with the defeat.

Alex Fairweather (Lenoir, NC) and two relievers combined to limit Lenoir-Rhyne to just two hits in the shutout victory in the nightcap.  Fairweather scattered a pair of hits and struck out eight in six scoreless innings pitched.  He improved to 4-2 for the season while Travis McSweeney (Palm Harbor, FL) was credited with the save.

Lenoir-Rhyne freshman Justin Crowell (New London, NC) dropped his first game of the year and fell to 5-1 despite allowing just one earned run in the contest.   For Catawba, Matt Kepley (Greensboro, NC) had a two-run single in the third and Jerry Sands (Clayton, NC) hit a sacrifice fly in the fifth frame.