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#22 Baseball Defeats Evansville, 7-4 4/14/2004
#22 Baseball Defeats Evansville, 7-4 NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The #22 Vanderbilt Commodores defeated Evansville tonight 7-4 at Hawkins Field in non-conference action and improves to 25-8 on the season. Evansville owns an overall record of 16-17. It was staff day for both teams as a total of 14 pitchers played in the game — eight for the Purple Aces and six for Vanderbilt. Sophomore Jeff Sues earned the win going three innings and giving up two runs on four hits. He struck out four, including the first three batters of the game, and walked one. “I started off really good and felt like I was throwing pretty well,” Sues said. “Then I was leaving the ball up and they were hitting it and that was pretty much it.” Other Commodore pitchers who saw action included Stephen Shao, Blake Owen, Tyler Rhoden, Michael Wagner and Matt Buschmann who picked up his second save of the season. “I like the way Stephen Shao, Tyler Rhoden and Michael Wagner pitched,” Head Coach Tim Corbin commented about his bull pen. “Those three freshman are going to be good pitchers. I like the way Wagner (Michael) threw. His last outing wasn’t what he wanted and he came in tonight, pitched very aggressively and threw a lot of strikes and that’s important. We try to stress that to the younger kids anyway. Just pound the strike zone and let them put the ball in play because tonight was another game where we were errorless and played pretty good baseball out there. We turned a double play in the ninth inning that was big and that’s the most important thing — to bring defense with you and we did. I’m happy with what happened on the mound, especially with the young guys.” The Commodore freshmen pitchers (Shao, Rhoden and Wagner) combined for four innings and gave up just two hits and struck out three while allowing no runs. The Commodores got on the board in the first inning scoring four runs off starter Shaun Williams who picked up his first loss of the season. Ryan Klosterman and Antoan Richardson each drew a walk. Warner Jones hit a single between shortstop and third and Klosterman scored on the hit-and-run. Jones stole second and advanced to third on a throwing error by the catcher (Dustin Knight) that scored Richardson. Cesar Nicolas hit a single to right field scoring Jones and advanced to second on a bobble by Cody Strait in right field. Nicolas advanced to third on a ground out by Mike Baxter and scored on a wild pitch by Williams. Eric Lis hit a solo home run in the second inning and the Aces added another run in the third. Eric Jones hit a double off the left field wall and advanced to third on a sacrifice bunt by Minor. Jones scored on a sacrifice fly to right field by Mike Serafini. VU added a run in the fourth when Worth Scott hit a double to right field; advanced to third on an error by Strait; and scored on a balk by Matt Brinkmann. Evansville added two runs in the sixth inning to narrow the Commodore lead to one, 5-4. Jeff Fontaine reached on a walk and advanced to second on a single by Dan Robinson. Fontaine scored on Dustin Knight’s double to left center field and Robinson scored on a ground out to the shortstop. The Commodores answered with two runs of their own in the sixth inning. Matt Zeller hit a single to shallow center field and Matt McGraner followed with a single to right center field and then stole second. Worth Scott then hit a shot down the first base line that scored Zeller and McGraner. “They (midweek games) are never easy and the bottom line is getting a victory out of it,” Corbin said. “You can analyze games but when it gets right down to it, as long as you take care of business and win at the end — that’s what you want at this point.” Vanderbilt totaled 10 hits in the contest, including two from Worth Scott, Cesar Nicolas and Matt McGraner. The Commodores were errorless for the 15th time this season, including four consecutive games. VU is 10-5 in errorless games. Vanderbilt hosts Arkansas this weekend in a three-game SEC series. The first game is Friday at 7 pm with the Saturday game starting at 6 p.m. |
