No. 6 Radford Stuns No. 3 Liberty, 4-1
Brandon McGinnis
Radford opened the 2018 Big South Baseball Championships with a 4-1 victory over third-seeded Liberty in possibly the last matchup between the conference rivals on the diamond as the Highlanders plated three runs in the final three frames.
Entering the tournament with a 10-2 mark in the last three championships, Radford appeared poised to make another run in the tournament as the Highlanders locked into an early 1-1 game with Liberty.
Radford has scored in the first inning 17 times on the season, holding a 12-5 mark when doing so and Tuesday afternoon was nothing different.
Luke Wise led the game off with a walk and moved to second base on a passed ball. Wise scooted into third base on a
Kyle Butler fly out to center, setting up
Spencer Horwitz's first RBI on the day with a ground out to second base.
Liberty answered with a pair of singles from Tre Todd and Tyler Galazin. Galazin's single into right field allowed Todd to advance to third base, but would be thrown out 9-6-3-4 after thinking about taking second base on the throw in. Todd scored one batter later on a passed ball.
After the Flames tallied two hits in the opening frame, Radford starter
Austin Rosslocked in, holding Liberty to only two more hits in his 5.2 innings of work on the mound. The only run allowed came as an unearned run for Ross, lowering his ERA to 3.54 on the season.
The two teams each placed a runner on third base and were unable to cross the plate. Liberty put runners on the corners with one out in the third. Ross forced a pop up into shallow left field that
Colby Higgerson made a sliding catch as he closed in on the foul line. Higgerson's web gem kept the Flames from taking the lead
In the sixth, Radford put a runner on third base as Horwitz reached on a fielders' choice throwing error that sailed into the Highlander dugout. Moving to second on the free base, Horwitz tagged up on a fly out and was stranded as
Matt Roth lined out to left field.
Radford was held to four hits through six frames until the Highlanders struck for two runs on two hits after loading the bases in the seventh.
Straton Podaras opened the inning with a double off the left-center wall for Radford's third double of the day. Higgerson followed with a sacrifice bunt that the Liberty infield couldn't make a play on as the Highlanders put runners on the corners with its first two-hit inning.
After
Richard De la Cruz struck out swinging,
Carlin Christian earned a four-pitch pinch hit walk to load the bases.
Scoring the first run of the game, Wise provided the second run as he lifted an 0-2 pitch into center field to plate Podaras for the go-ahead run. Wise's third sac fly of the season ended up being the game-winning run, but not before Radford added an insurance run as Butler loaded the bases again on a hit by pitch.
Horwitz pushed the lead to 3-1 after earning a six-pitch walk for his 10
th multi-RBI game of 2018. Despite having his 14-game hitting streak come to an end, Horwitz drove in two runs, increasing his RBI total to 43.
Reliving Ross in the sixth,
Kyle Palmer took the lead and tossed 2.1 frames of two-hit ball, while stranding three Flames in the bottom half of the seventh as Liberty attempted to knot the game.
After a three up, three down eighth for both teams, De la Cruz led off the ninth with a solo home run to left field that one-hopped the Liberty bullpen out of the ballpark for his second home run of the season.
Higgerson closed out the ninth after Liberty put two runners on base, forcing three fly outs for his third save as the Highlanders snapped a three-game tournament skid to the Flames.