CARY, N.C. – The Slippery Rock University baseball team parlayed a five-run fourth inning into a 6-5 victory against Dominican College Sunday afternoon at the USA Baseball Training Complex in Cary, North Carolina.
The win evened The Rock's record to 5-5 on year overall while Dominican fell to 4-4 with the loss.
Joe Campagna and
Matt Mandes drove in two runs each for The Rock with
Luca Fuscardo and
Tyler Walters accounting for one RBI apiece.
Frankie Jezioro enjoyed a 3-for-4 day that included two doubles, one stolen base, one RBI and one walk. Fuscardo and
Carson Kessler also registered multi-hit games as well.
James Divosevic, Walters, Campagna and
Mitchell Wood produced The Rock's remaining three hits.
Josh Coleman (1-1) continued his solid start to the 2017 season by throwing two scoreless innings out of The Rock's bullpen in relief of starter
Matt Gordon to earn his first win of the season. Coleman surrendered just one hit while striking out three batters. Divosevic notched his first save of the season by throwing a perfect 1.1 innings, including three strikeouts, to close out the win.
Slippery Rock found itself trailing 1-0 through three innings before exploding for five runs in the fourth to break away from the Chargers. The big inning featured a two-run double by Campagna, a sacrifice fly by Mandes, which plated Campagna as well as back-to-back run-scoring hits by Fuscardo and Walters.
Dominican managed to trim The Rock's lead to just one with a three-run frame in the bottom of the fourth, but SRU quickly gave itself an insurance run in the fifth via another sacrifice fly by Mandes that scored Kessler, who singled to leadoff the inning before advancing to third on Jezioro's second double of the game.
The Chargers added a final run in the eighth inning, but would promptly see its comeback bid shutdown by Divosevic, who easily recorded the game's final four outs to secure the SRU win.
Slippery Rock will play another nine-inning game against Dominican on Monday at 9 a.m. before concluding its time in Cary, North Carolina with a doubleheader against the Chargers on Tuesday.
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