The Seton Hall baseball team won two of three games over George Washington University this past weekend in their three-game series to improve to 5-8 on the season.
The Pirates started their scoring in Friday afternoon’s game with a second inning homerun from Casey Dana. Dana’s hit tied the game after the Colonials took a first inning lead. GW answered with four runs in the second to take a 5-1 lead, but Seton Hall fired back in the third inning as a groundout by Jerry Huntzinger scored sophomore Devin Hack.
Another four-run showing in the third inning for the Colonials put them ahead 9-2. The fifth inning showed the Pirates were still in this game as hits from Huntzinger and Hack with a walk from Matt Toke put men on base. Hack scored off a wild pitch and Tyler Shedler-McAvoy hit a three-run homerun to left center field, cutting the lead 9-5. However, GW had an answer with a score in the bottom of the fifth.
The Pirates attempted to crawl back with two runs in the eighth inning from Zack Sylvester and Toke, putting them within two runs of GW, but the Colonials tacked on another three runs and took the game 13-8 by the end of the ninth inning.
Both teams were scoreless through two innings in the second game on Saturday until William Gale and Huntzinger scored in the third inning to put the Pirates up 2-0. Seton Hall erupted in the eighth inning for five runs with Gale and Huntzinger htting singles and Hack adding a run for a 3-0 lead with a single as well.
Dana walked and put Shedler-McAvoy at the plate with the bases loaded. Shedler-McAvoy hit a grand slam to put the Pirates ahead 7-0. A ninth inning score from Jonathan Luders put the Colonials away and brought Seton Hall their fourth win of the season, 8-0. Pitchers Ryan McLinskey and Chris Shine attributed to the shutout, as they both had 5 strikeouts through four and five innings, respectively.
In the series finale on Sunday, Huntzinger opened the game with a double and scored on a groundout by Toke. The Colonials wouldn’t be put away, however, with three runs spanning the first two innings that put them ahead early, 3-1.
Collin Sheehan recorded an RBI in the fourth inning with a double that scored Dana. With the bases loaded early in the sixth inning, Luders was hit by a pitch, which scored Toke. Gale also walked, scoring Shedler-McAvoy.
A wild pitch then gave Sheehan the path to score and capped off a three-run inning that put the Pirates back on top 5-3. In the top of the seventh inning, Toke scored off an RBI from Sylvester, and a passed ball scored Shedler-McAvoy to extend the Pirates' lead to 7-3. A run from the Colonials in the eighth inning and Sylvester’s score in the ninth brought the game to its end as Seton Hall took the final game of the series 8-4.
Seton Hall will return to action with a three-game series in North Carolina against Davidson on March 28.
Thomas Donnelly can be reached at thomas.donnelly@student.shu.edu. Follow him on Twitter @_tommyd023.
