Our baseball team completed a 3 game sweep of Dayton over the weekend behind some timely hitting and terrific pitching.
Drake Fellows pitched a masterpiece on Friday going 6, giving up 5 hits with 3 earned, 2 walks and 13 ring ups in an 11-3 Commodore victory.
On Saturday in game 1, as the Commodores played a doubleheader Saturday due to weather concerns on Sunday, Patrick Raby pitched another gem. Rabes went 6, gave up 2 hits, 0 runs, with 2 walks and 8 K’s. Rabes’ fastball was hitting its spots and his curve and changeup were superb. Love what I’m seeing out of Rabes. He looks very much like the Patrick Raby we saw 2 years ago, even better really. His performance on the hill is a big key to our success this season among other factors. Hugh Fisher pitched 2/3 of an in inning and didn’t have great success, but Tyler Brown came in with his 93-94 fastball and was tremendous. In 2.1 innings, Tyler gave up no hits, 0 runs with no walks and 4 K’s. Tyler was phenomenal.
J.J. Bleday was 2 for 3 with his fourth homer of the season and his 11th RBI. He is now hitting .442. Austin Martin is still leading us in hitting at .476. Ethan Paul is hitting .422, awesome leadoff hitter Cooper Davis is hitting .383, and Philip Clarke is hitting .283 but has belted out 4 homers and leads the team in Ribeyes with 14. We are hitting .325 as a team and holding our opponents to a .227 average. Love the way our pitching is developing.
In game 2, Zach King, Ethan Smith and Jake Eder combined to pitch a 4 hit shutout as we blanked Dayton, 2-0. Zach went 4.1 innings, gave up 3 hits, 0 runs, with 2 walks and 7 K’s. Ethan came in for the 4th and pitched 3.2 innings of 1 hit shutout ball, with 3 walks and 5 K’s. The freshman was fantastic. Jake came in for the 9th and allowed a hit batsmen before ending the game on a 6-4-3 double play.
I thought our defense was pretty solid once again. We are now fielding at a .985 clip and our opponents are fielding at .971. We have only committed 6 errors in 11 games. We started out a little slowly, but we keep improving. Harrison Ray looks like he might be taking over at third for Jayson Gonzalez and he played some awesome third and got a couple of hits. Harrison was really good on Saturday.
We are now 9-2 on the season and D-1 Baseball and the National Collegiate Baseball Sportswriters Association (NCBWA) still have us at No.1 in the country. Collegiate Baseball and Baseball America haven’t released their polls this week. Collegiate Baseball had us at #2 behind LSU last week, and BA had us at No.1.
So some really good stuff going on for this baseball program. Like what this team is right now, it’s development, and what it can be. Pitching is looking stronger and stronger and we’ve got really good hitting and some pretty solid defense. Austin Martin is making some sensational plays up the middle at second, going to his right and jumping and throwing across his body for outs. Austin is a heckuva’n athlete.
Today, we’ll play Davidson at 1 PM CT at the Hawk. The game will be broadcast by SEC Network+. Freshman right hander Chance Huff will take the hill. Chance is 1-0 with a 7.71 ERA, but has plenty of talent. It will be good to see Chance get a start and see how he fares. Tomorrow, we’ll host East Tennessee State with a 2 PM CT first pitch. That game will also be broadcast by SEC Network+. No announcement on pitchers yet.
This weekend we’ll host Illinois State Friday at 4:30 PM CT (SEC Network+) with Drake, in all likelihood, on the hill, Saturday at 2 PM CT (SEC Network+) with Rabes on the mound, and Sunday at 1 PM CT (SEC Network+) with our starter to be determined.
So, we’re cookin pretty well right now. Will keep you posted on our progress today and the rest of this week.
Women’s Tennis
Fernanda Contreras won her 127th career singles match breaking Taka Bertrand’s single season career singles record at VU. The third ranked Contreras won 6-2, 6-3 at No.1 singles. Awesome stuff from Fernanda. She’s been a phenomenal player for our team for 4 years now, and is a first class young woman. And we’ve got Fernanda for a good while longer this season. She’s an amazing leader on this team as well. Such a fiery competitor. It rubs off on the rest of the team. Our No. 6 women (ITA rankings) defeated Arkansas @ the Currey Tennis Center, 6-1, on Sunday to move to 7-3 and complete a weekend sweep as we defeated Missouri, 7-0, on Friday.
Christina Rosca, Georgia Drummy, Amanda Meyer, and Carolyn Campana were also singles victors. Emma Kurtz/Emily Smith and Summer Dvorak/Amanda Meyer won in doubles to clinch the doubles point. Teams play 3 doubles matches and if a team wins 2, it clinches the doubles point. We’re a really good doubles playing team. Geoff is big on doubles and knows the importance of it.
We are on the road this weekend playing @ No.34 Auburn at 2 PM Friday and then @Alabama on Sunday at 11 AM CT. Alabama is not in the top 50 of the ITA rankings, but they’re a dangerous SEC team and it’s on the road which will make it tougher. So big weekend for Geoff and the team.
Men’s Tennis
The men, after losing a tough one @ No.8 Mississippi State last Friday, defeated No.30 Ole Miss on Sunday @ Ole Miss in a huge victory for our team, 4-1.. Our 27th ranked men moved to 10-3 on the season. George Harwell, Macsen Sisam, Billy Rowe, and Panu Virtenen were all victors in singles. Ole Miss defeated us in the doubles, but our singles performance got us over the top.
We now face Auburn at home this Friday @ the Currey Tennis Center at 2 PM CT.
Sunday, we’ll face No.20 Alabama at noon CT. Both matches will be streamed on vucommodores.com. The women’s matches will probably be available for streaming too on the vucommodores site.
Men’s Golf
Our No.3 Men’s golf team is presently tied for 4th at +3 in the Querencia Cabo Collegiate in Los Cabos, Mexico. No.1 Oklahoma State is leading at -26. No.9 Arizona State is 2nd at -17 and No. 36 Baylor is 3rd at -3. We are tied with No.50 Arizona in 4th.
We are through holes 6-8 today, the final day of the tournament. Maybe we can get hot and get to third before the day is over. Will Gordon is tied for 11th at -1, Reid Davenport is tied 23rd at +1, John Augenstein is tied for 26th at +3, and Patrick Martin and Harrison Ott are tied for 29th at +4. Not our best showing in this event, but maybe w can improve here on the final stretch of holes.
Will let you know what transpired tomorrow.