ORLANDO – Senior Jeremy Frost finished 2-for-3 with two home runs and three RBIs to lead UCF to a 6-5 victory over Mercer on Senior Day Saturday afternoon at Jay Bergman Field. The win for UCF clinched at least a tie for the regular season championship in the Atlantic Sun Conference and it also gave UCF the No. 1 seed entering next week’s A-Sun Tournament in DeLand at Stetson University.
The Golden Knights jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning when freshman Clay Timpner delivered a RBI-groundout to score senior Mike Myers.
UCF added to its lead in the second on Frost’s first home run of the day, a two-run shot, to give UCF a 3-0 advantage.
Mercer got on the scoreboard in the fourth with two runs off UCF starter Taylor Cobb. Patrick Murphy drove in two runs with a single that took a bad hop and bounced over UCF second baseman Adam Miller’s head to score the pair.
The Golden Knights scored again in the fifth and sixth inning to expand the lead to 5-2. In the fifth, Frost drilled his second home run of the game. Frost also became the first UCF player to hit two home runs in a game since he did it himself earlier in the season vs. Long Island on March 14. The home runs in consecutive at-bats was also a first for a Golden Knight since Mike Myers hit two homers in a row May 19, 2001 vs. Jacksonville.
In the sixth, Jason Graham delivered a sacrifice fly to score Ryan Bear to give UCF a 5-2 advantage.
Mercer got back into the game in the seventh with three runs off the UCF bullpen. Kyle Levengood hit a three-run home run off to deadlock the contest at five.
The Golden Knights answered right back with a run in the bottom of the seventh to take the lead for good at 6-5. Timpner added his second RBI of the game with a single to center on a 1-2 count to score Myers.
UCF turned the game over to Von David Stertzbach and Zach Sutton to close out the Bears. Stertzbach pitched a perfect 1.1 innings to raise his record to a perfect 7-0 on the year.
Sutton pitched the ninth inning for his seventh save of the season. The seven saves for Sutton place him in a tie for fifth-place on the single-season save list at UCF.
Mercer did makes things interesting after two quick outs in the ninth as the Bears loaded the bases before Sutton got Luke Jackson to strike out swinging to end the game.
The win pushes UCF’s record to 36-20 overall and 23-7 in the A-Sun while Mercer dropped to 22-32 and 13-17 in the conference. The victory was also the Golden Knights’ sixth in a row and their second straight three-game sweep of a conference opponent.
UCF will enter the A-Sun Tournament with the top seed and will wait to see whom it will face as the conference weekend finishes. As the No. 1 seed, the Golden Knights will open play at the conference tournament at 11 a.m. on Wednesday vs. the No. 6 seed.
UCF Stops Mercer 6-5 To Clinch The Regular Season A-Sun Championship
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