VALDOSTA, Ga. – The Valdosta State baseball team picked up a pair of convincing wins on Saturday (16-6, 9-2) over the visiting Christian Brothers Bucs in their Gulf South Conference opener at Billy Grant Field in Valdosta, Ga. on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.
In game one, the Blazers took an early 4-0 lead in the bottom half of the second inning on a
Chipper Andzel RBI single, followed by
David Wortham's bases loaded double, which drove in three.
The Bucs tied the game up with one run in the third and three more in the fourth on RBI singles by Michael Halley and Scott Pala, and CBU claimed a brief 6-4 lead in the top half of the seventh inning with a sacrifice fly off the bat of Riley Kilgore, followed by an RBI triple by Casey Goodwin.
From that moment forward, however, it was all Valdosta State, as the Blazer bats came alive for a 12-run seventh, in which the Blazers sent 15 hitters to the plate and racked up seven hits. The biggest blow of the inning came from
Ryan Smith, who delivered a bases loaded double down the right field line, before increasing his RBI total in the inning to five with his second double of the frame, a two-run walkoff two-bagger to right center field.
Four Blazers ended the game with multiple hits in the contest, which fueled the offensive explosion and resulted in a victory for
Roman Donofro, his second of the season. Meanwhile, Matthew Mills suffered the loss to drop his record to 0-2 on the year.
The Valdosta State offense picked up where they left off in game two and overcame an early 2-0 deficit in the third with a six run inning that included an RBI triple by
Dalton Duty, a two-run triple by Andzel, and
Marcus Sigmon's fourth homer of the season. Sigmon's two-run blast increased his RBI total to 24, which places him nine RBI's ahead of the second place position on the GSC leaderboard for total runs batted in so far in 2016.
The Blazers added two in the fifth and one in the sixth to cap off the contest and improve their overall record to 9-3, 2-0 in GSC play. The Bucs fell to 4-5 overall and 0-2 in conference play after the two losses.
As the lone pitcher in the second game,
Kellan Bailey went the distance for the first time this season, allowing just five hits with five strikeouts and no walks over seven innings of work.
The three game set against CBU continues tomorrow in a finale set for 1:00 p.m. at Billy Grant Field.
