CARY, N.C. – The Slippery Rock University baseball team finished its opening weekend of the season with an 11-4 victory against Goldey-Beacom College Sunday at the USA Baseball Training Complex in Cary, North Carolina.
The Rock's win over GBC closed a successful opening to 2025 as SRU returns home with a 3-1 record. The Lightning fell to 3-2 on the year following the loss. SRU has now compiled a winning percentage of no worse than .500 in its first four games of the season in 32 of head coach
Jeff Messer's 40 years in charge of the program.
Slippery Rock trailed Goldey-Beacom 4-0 before a six-run fifth inning ignited a Rock offense that closed the day with 16 hits, five walks and three stolen bases.
The Rock had six athletes record multi-hit games Sunday.
Tyler Cerame,
Gage Gillott and
Brandon Butler paced the charge with a trio of three-hit performances.
Gillott and Butler both went 3-for-4 with two runs scored and one walk while Gillott added a pair of RBI and a stolen base. Cerame exited the game going 3-for-5 with one run, two RBI and a stolen base.
Jimmy Sadler concluded the victory at 2-for-3 with two runs, three RBI a stolen base and one double.
Clay Wiesen and
Treston Nemeth recorded two-hit days as well with Wiesen also scoring twice and driving in one run.
Rounding out The Rock's top contributors at the plate were
Cam Panyko Morris (one run, two walks),
Michael Kitko (one hit) and
Joe Purcell (one walk, one run, one RBI).
Ethan Edkins (1-0) earned his first victory since his freshman season as the now healthy senior pitcher settled in after a shaky opening frame to pitch five innings, striking out four with four runs allowed on seven hits and one walk.
Hunter Loomis and
Parker Hogge were great for The Rock in relief of Edkins. Loomis pitched three shutout innings with four strikeouts, while Hogge tossed a scoreless ninth inning. Hogge and Loomis gave up one hit apiece.
The Rock's marquee fifth inning saw the first five batters of the frame reach base with back-to-back run-scoring hits by Wiesen and Sadler (2 RBI) being the catalysts of the inning. Wiesen later scored on a wild pitch with a Cerame RBI-single and another RBI off the bat of Gillott occurring before Goldey-Beacom could get out of the jam.
SRU went on to plate two runs in each of the following two innings in addition to a final insurance run in the eighth.
While The Rock scored a plethora of runs in the game's final innings, Loomis and Hogge largely shut down the Lighting hitters as GBC managed to put only two baserunners into scoring position through the final four innings on the way to SRU's third win of the season.
George Starr (0-1) was the pitcher of record for Goldey-Beacom after giving up six runs on six hits and one walk in 4.1 innings. Lighting leadoff hitter Christian Petrillo went 3-for-3 with two runs and one stolen base.
Weather permitting, Slippery Rock is next scheduled to play a three-game series at Shippensburg University. The Rock and Raiders will first meet for a nine-inning game 2 p.m. Feb. 28 followed by a March 1 doubleheader with game one scheduled for a 12 p.m. start.
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