Game 1 | Game 2
CLEVELAND, Tenn. – The UWF baseball team dropped a pair of games at Lee by finals of 4-1 and 6-5 on Saturday afternoon at Olympic Field in Cleveland, Tennessee.
West Florida moves to 22-22 and 15-13 in Gulf South Conference play while Lee improves to 27-21 and 17-12 in the league. UWF will learn its opponent in the opening round of the GSC tournament on Monday following the results of the rest of this weekend's series.
Preston Moore led all Argonauts with four total hits on the day while five different players tallied an RBI for the visitors.
Game 1: Lee jumped on the board first after Thomas Zazzaro singled, advanced to second on a balk and came home on a single from Dylan Standifer.
From there on, UWF starting pitcher
Tyler Dowdy, settled down and was efficient through the next four innings as the right-hander only allowed one base runner to reach second base and that was via a sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the fifth inning.
West Florida would provide Dowdy with some run support in the sixth after being stalled for most of the afternoon. In the frame,
Chris Johnson walked, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by
Trent Jeffcoat and stole third. After
Brady Browning walked and stole second to put runners on first and second,
Cullan O'Shea grounded out to first, bringing home Johnson for his second RBI of the weekend.
O'Shea scored the only run in game one of the series when he hit a home run to right center in the top of the sixth.
Lee would once again go ahead in the bottom of the frame on back-to-back doubles from Standifer and Isaac Quinones. The double from Quinones chased Dowdy (4-5) who finished the day with 5.1 innings pitched, allowing three runs on six hits with two walks and a strikeout.
The Flames tallied one more in the bottom of the seventh off of
Sam Brown on an RBI single from Jared Demkowicz.
Hunter Lucas would pitch the rest of the contest, throwing 1.1 scoreless innings.
UWF would get two runners on in both the seventh and eighth innings but could not get runners home. Sam Fulton (5-2) took the win for LU after throwing 3.1 scoreless innings in relief of Miguel Alba. Fulton tallied two strikeouts and only allowed three hits. Standifer and Demkowicz had three and two hits respectively for the Flames.
Game 2: Lee would get on the board first again in the final game of the series, striking in the bottom of the third on back-to-back RBI singles from Standifer and Demkowicz. The singles pushed Argo starter,
Josh Pahlad, as he went 2.1 innings allowing two runs on six hits with a walk.
West Florida would steadily fight their way back into the contest in the top of the fourth as Moore doubled to left center with one out. Following a fly-out, freshman
Jadon Fryman singled through the right side to cut the deficit in half.
UWF was at it again it the top of the next frame as
Mark Townsend singled up the middle to start the inning. After a sacrifice bunt and a groundout to move Townsend to third, Jeffcoat ripped an infield single to tie the scoring at two and extend his team-high in hits with his 60
th of the season.
In the next at-bat, Browning singled to center-field to bring home Jeffcoat, who had advanced to second on a wild pitch and give UWF their first lead since it was 1-0 in game one of the series.
Following another 1-2-3 inning by Lee, West Florida loaded the bases for
Jack Schad to hit a sacrifice fly to centerfield, doubling the lead for the visitors.
After a RBI single in the bottom of the sixth by the Flames, UWF tallied their final run of the game. Jeffcoat led off the inning with a single up the middle, stole second and score on a bunt single by Browning and an error by the Flames pitcher.
Unfortunately, the hosts would tie it up in the bottom of the 7
th on a two-run double by Standifer off of UWF reliever,
Jack Bellah. Bellah pitched admirably in relief as he threw four innings, allowing three runs on four hits with a walk.
Lee would cap the scoring in the bottom of the eighth on a sacrifice fly by Joshua Perez off of
Hunter Lucas (0-1) as he scored Cam Suto who was placed on second due to the international tie-breaker rule.
Sean Casteel (3-0) took the win for the Flames after throwing 1.1 scoreless innings of relief. Brandon Daniels and Demkowicz each had three hits while Standifer had three RBI's for Lee.
For the latest information on UWF Baseball, please visit goargos.com or follow the team on Instagram and Twitter @UWFBaseball.
