WILMINGTON, N.C. – The third-seeded William & Mary Tribe used a three-run fifth inning to erase a 2-0 deficit and down the Elon University baseball team 5-2 in an opening round game of the 2017 CAA Baseball Tournament.
Despite hitting some historic numbers, Elon starter Kyle Brnovich (6-5) took the loss. The freshman allowed all three runs (two earned) on nine hits over 6.2 innings and struck out seven.
William & Mary starter Daniel Powers (6-4) was on the ropes early, but rebounded to throw 7.0 innings. He gave up both Phoenix runs on five hits, but allowed just one hit over his final 5.0 innings of work. Nick Brown tossed the final inning for his eighth save of the year.
At the plate, Elon (24-31) got two hits and one RBI from Joe Satterfield. Will Nance also drove in a run with a double.
The Tribe (32-23) saw Brandon Raquet double twice, triple drive in three and score one to pace its offense.
How It Happened: Elon grabbed a first-inning lead when Nance delivered a two-out double down the left field line that allowed Ryne Ogren, who had singled and moved to second on a walk, to score.
The Tribe started its half of the first with back-to-back, two-strike hits to put runners on the corners. After a wild pitch put two in scoring position, Brnovich struck out Cullen Large before Ryan Hall lined a ball to center that was snared by Zach Evers who then fired a perfect strike to Hayden Platt at the plate to mow down Raquet to end the inning.
The Phoenix offense got back to work in the second inning. Ty Adcock led off with an infield single, headed to second on a walk and scored on Satterfield’s one-out single up the middle to give Elon a 2-0 advantage.
With one out and two in scoring position in the last of the fifth for William & Mary, Raquet was able to tie the game with a double down the first base line that a diving James Venuto was unable to field. Owen Socher followed with a bloop single to center to put runners on the corners before moving to second on a wild pitch. Raquet tried to score on a ground ball to second with a drawn in infield, but got hung up between third and the plate before a throwing error allowed him to score the third Tribe run.
William & Mary tacked some insurance runs in with two down in the ninth. Kyle Wrighte walked and raced to third on an errant pickoff attempt before scoring on a Matthew Trehub single. Raquet followed with a triple to right to make it a 5-2 game.
Notes: Brnovich’s first strike out of the day was his 97th of the year, setting a new Division I program record for a freshman (Steven Hensley had 96 in 2006)… His fourth K of the game was the 100th of the year, making him just the fifth pitcher in program history to hit the century mark in a season… Brnovich finished the day with 103 strikeouts for the year, ranking as the fourth-best season in program history.
WOW.. Time for a change!