PENSACOLA, Fla. – The UWF baseball team split a doubleheader with Southern Indiana on Tuesday at Jim Spooner Field. The Screaming Eagles won the first game, 6-1, before and the Argonauts secured a 1-0 victory in the nightcap.
UWF (11-6) improved to 8-3 at home and earned its first win when scoring fewer than five runs in a game. USI is now 7-4 overall.
Alden Davis and
Trent Jeffcoat each had two hits for the Argos. Davis had a hit in both games to extend his hitting streak to nine, matching Jeffcoat's season-opening stretch for the longest this season on the team.
"(Lucas) McNew was the story in the game for them and offensively we didn't do a whole lot," UWF head coach
Mike Jeffcoat said. "We bounced back in the second game with
Jack Bellah giving us four solid innings and working into the fifth, and then we started going to the bullpen with some of our main guys. (Jacob) Estes did a nice job and (Dilan) Lawson did great closing it out."
GAME ONE
USI scored two runs in the second, fifth and ninth innings for a 6-1 win. The Eagles outhit the Argos 9-6.
Lucas McNew went 3-for-4 with five RBI to lead the Eagles. His 2-run home run in the third opened the scoring in the contest. The Eagles added two more on another McNew base hit in the fifth to extend the lead to 4-0. In the ninth, McNew drove in Tyler Wheeler and then scored on a Trent Robinson single to right.
Trent Jeffcoat provided the lone run for the Argos, scoring on a
Mark Townsend single in the sixth. Jeffcoat had two hits of UWF's six hits.
Sammy Barnett (1-0) struck out six in six innings to keep UWF off balance. Blake Ciuffetelli earned the save with two scoreless innings.
Sean Means (0-1) suffered the loss after working two innings and allowing two runs on three hits.
GAME TWO
Hits were hard to come by in the second contest, with the teams combining for eight but also drawing nine total walks.
UWF scored the only run in the fourth innings on a
Dean Hotz bases loaded infield single. After a scoreless first three innings, the Argos loaded the bases on a single and a pair of walks before Hotz pushed a dribbler to the right side of the infield for an RBI that scored
Jack Schad.
From there the UWF bullpen and defense rose to the challenge, working out of runners on base situations each of the final three innings. The most notable came in the sixth when
Chris Johnson threw out an Eagle base runner at home on a potential sacrifice fly.
In the seventh, USI got a runner to second with one out before
Dilan Lawson come on in relief and ended the game on a shallow flyout to left and a strikeout for his fourth save of the year, putting the sophomore tied for fourth nationally.
Bellah earned his first win in his first collegiate start, allowing two hits while striking out three in 4.1 innings of work.
After the midweek action, UWF will travel to West Alabama for a 3-game series this Saturday and Sunday.
