Baseball Drops Finale, Series to CougarsBaseball Drops Finale, Series to Cougars

Baseball Drops Finale, Series to Cougars

by James Warnick
Box Score

ORLANDO – Houston scored three runs in the seventh inning to claim Sunday’s finale by a score of 7-4 to take the weekend series over UCF baseball.

The Knights dropped to 17-6 overall and 3-3 in Big 12 play with the setback, while the Cougars moved to 13-10 and 2-4 in league play with the victory. The series loss marked the Black and Gold’s first of the season, as they had won all five previous series coming into the weekend.

“Early we had a lot of opportunities to cash in, but we left too many men on base. That’s a completely different game if we would have converted some of those early chances,” head UCF coach Rich Wallace said. “That wasn’t Dom Stagliano’s greatest start, but he certainly pitched well enough to keep us in the game. There were some opportunities there, obviously offensively, and we just couldn’t make a couple of plays there in that seventh inning.”

Trailing by a pair of runs early in the game, the Black and Gold countered back with two runs of their own in the last of the third to tie things up at 2-2. Edian Espinal and Andrew Williamson started the frame with back-to-back doubles to cut the deficit in half.  Williamson then moved over to third base on a groundout and scored on a wild pitch to deadlock the score.

The Cougars then regained the lead in the fourth on a solo home run from Xavier Perez to make it 3-2. UH then made it 4-2 in the top of the sixth.

UCF responded with two runs of its own in the bottom of the sixth to again tie the game. With Chase Krewson on second base and one away, Kendrey Maduro drove him home with an RBI single to the left side to make it 4-3. DeAmez Ross then followed with an RBI triple to right field to tie it at 4-4.

Houston then managed to load the bases on a trio of free passes with nobody out in the seventh. Evan Haeger then drove home the go-ahead run on an RBI groundout, Perez plated another run via a sacrifice fly and Aaron Lugo made it 7-4 with an RBI double.

The Knights then got a runner aboard in both the bottom of the seventh and eighth innings, but couldn’t get him home as UH reliever Chris Scinta pitched well down the stretch to seal the victory for the Cougars.

Scinta earned the win in relief for Houston after tossing the final 3.2 innings of scoreless and hitless relief to move to 2-0 on the year. UCF reliever Isaac Williams was tagged with his first loss to fall to 0-1. A total of six pitchers saw action in the game for the Black and Gold and Carter Stanford led the way to throwing 2.1 innings of scoreless relief down the stretch.

Williamson led UCF at the plate by going 2-for-5 with a double, an RBI and a run scored. Ross and Maduro also drove in runs on the afternoon for the Knights. Lugo led UH by going 3-for-5 with a homer, a double and three runs batted in.

Despite suffering the setback, the Knights have still won 11 of their last 14 ballgames.

The Black and Gold will next open a four-game road trip at in-state foe Jacksonville on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at JU’s John Sessions Stadium. UCF will then return to league play with a three-game set at Cincinnati on Friday to Sunday at UC Baseball Stadium.