‘Cats stump Shorter

    The GCSU baseball team won its fourth consecutive game in convincing fashion Tuesday, shutting out the Shorter College Hawks, 9-0.
    But the No. 13 Bobcat bats did not dominate the seventy-sixth contest between the two teams as the score might suggest. In fact, through the first five innings, the Bobcats had only scored one run on four hits.
    That run came in the bottom of the first when sophomore center fielder Sean Harrell singled, advanced on a balk and eventually scored on a groundout by sophomore third basemen Brooks Robinson.
    Hawks starter Ben Erichson pitched well through the next three innings before a vicious line drive off the bat of freshman first basemen Benton Yaun struck Erichson in the face, prematurely ending his start in the bottom of the fifth. Erichson walked off the field with assistance from trainers.
    The Bobcats finally padded their early lead in the sixth inning.
    After junior catcher Pete Paris singled to lead off, Robinson delivered the first extra-base hit of the afternoon, a triple off the right-center field wall. Sophomore outfielder Andrew Evans followed with a single, and the Bobcats’ lead grew to three.
    In the seventh, the Bobcats blew the game apart with some assistance from the Hawks. Five hits, two walks, two balks and an error resulted in five runs for GCSU.
    The Bobcats put one more on the board in the eighth inning when freshman catcher Richard Pirkle homered to left for his first hit as a Bobcat.
    Robinson led the offense, going 1-4 with a triple, three RBI’s and two runs scored.
    “I wanted to be the guy that kick started the team,” said the sophomore from Evans, Ga. “He was trying to stay away with his pitches, but I just went with it.”
    The Bobcats’ ace, Sean Heimpel, led the Bobcats to their first shutout of the season with his first strong start. He pitched five innings to earn the win, giving up four hits and two walks while recording two strikeouts.
    “My last two starts weren’t that good,” Heimpel said. “Today I wanted a good start to build momentum. I wanted to locate my fastball and keep it down.”
    The Bobcats needed a solid start from Heimpel.
    During their previous five games, the Bobcats had allowed fewer than six runs only once, and fewer than ten runs only twice.
    Head coach Tom Carty agrees that the pitching must improve.
    “We have to pitch better,” he said. “We can pitch better one through nine than we have been.”
    While the pitching may have questions, the offense of late for GCSU has been sensational. Over the weekend, the Bobcats swept a three game series against Alabama-Huntsville in which they scored a total of 37 runs. Tuesday, they continued the trend with the 9-0 blowout.
    Despite victory, Carty is not ready to pat his team on the back.
    “(I’m) still waiting for all three aspects (of the game) to come together for a full nine innings,” Carty said. “I was a little disappointed in the attitude today. I want to see more energy from this team.”
    The Bobcats will play five games at home this week, hosting Ohio Valley University on Saturday and Sunday, the No. 18 University of Montevallo on Tuesday and Benedict College on Wednesday.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 15 2008. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry