University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Southern Miss
UCF
Baseball Drops Series Opener to UCF
4/9/2010 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
April 9, 2010
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - UCF jumped out to a 5-0 lead and held on to win 7-3 Friday night at Pete Taylor Park in the Conference USA series opener.
"I thought we built some momentum the last three games but we are playing very flat on Friday nights and I do not know the answer right now," head coach Scott Berry said.
UCF jumped out to a 5-0 lead with three runs in the third and a pair in the fifth, which was plenty for Knight starting pitcher Johnny Sedlock, who worked six innings allowing seven hits and one earned run.
Southern Miss hit two singles in the first but after that Sedlock did not allow another base runner until Joey Archer singled in the fifth inning.
"I have to tip my hat to Sedlock," Berry said. "He was a tough guy to hit and he located well and mixed his pitches but from our end we did not make any adjustments to him all game long."
Golden Eagles ace Todd McInnis allowed five runs on seven hits in five innings of work while striking out eight to fall to 2-3 on the season. Reliever Cody Schlagel allowed two runs in three innings of work out of the pen and Seth Hester needed only nine pitches to set the Knights down in the ninth.
Offensively Taylor Walker led the charge with three of the eight Southern Miss hits and a RBI. Travis Graves was the only other player with multiple hits as he had two, including a two-RBI single in the seventh inning.
UCF opened the scoring in the top of the third as Chris Taladay hit a three-run home run over the right-center field wall.
The Knights added to their lead in the top of the fifth on a two-out, two-RBI double by Chris Taladay to put UCF up 5-0.
Southern Miss struck for their first runs in the bottom of the seventh as Travis Graves ripped a bases loaded single to right-center field scoring Mark Ellis and Anthony Doss. Three hitters later Taylor Walker added a RBI single to score Joey Archer and make the score 5-3.
UCF answered with two runs in the top of the eighth and they loaded the bases on two singles and a walk with no one out, a Cody Schlagel wild pitch platted the first run and a sacrifice fly by Ryan Breen added the second run of the inning.
The two teams will meet again tomorrow with first pitch set for 3:00 p.m. Scott Copeland will return to the mound for Southern Miss, he has not pitched since the La. Tech series on March 20th.
-southernmiss.com-
