ANDERSON, S.C. --- The Tusculum University baseball team racked up 17 runs and 23 hits in a doubleheader sweep over Anderson University Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium.
Tusculum won the opener 9-3 and completed the sweep with an 8-3 victory in the night-cap. The Pioneers (5-5, 2-1 SAC) take two of the three games to capture the South Atlantic Conference opening series.
Tusculum posted 10 or more hits in all three games of the series and posted a .349 team batting average which included 38 hits including a dozen of the extra base variety.
Game 1: Tusculum 9, Anderson 3
Murphy Flood posted his second straight three-hit performance as Tusculum rallied to a 9-3 win over Anderson in Saturday's opener.
TU scored nine unanswered runs and overcame a 3-0 deficit in the first inning. The Pioneers pounded on 13 hits in the victory including three hits each by Flood and Will Samuelson.
TU starter Brady Salyards overcame a shaky first frame and blanked the Trojans for his final 4.2 innings on the mound as he scattered two hits and a walk during that stretch. Pioneer closer Drew Sliwinski picked up his second save of the year as he struck out a career-best nine of the 12 batters he would face. Sliwinski went 3.1 innings where he allowed one hit and zero walks in his 57-pitch effort.
Anderson scored three times in the bottom of the first inning, utilizing three hits, one walk and a TU error.
The Pioneers chipped away at the deficit scoring once in the second and tying the game with two scores in the third inning. In the second, Samuelson drove in TU's first run with a two-out double to left field. In the third, Luis Reyes and Zane Keener opened the inning with back-to-back singles. Reyes would score on Ben Scartz's sacrifice fly and Keener scored the tying run on a wild pitch.
Tusculum broke the tie in the top of the fifth as Jake Absher and Flood hit back-to-back RBI doubles as the Pioneers led 5-3.
The Pioneers tacked on four insurance runs in the top of the ninth thanks to a RBI single from Flood and Max Schmarder's two-run homer to right field.
Game 2: Tusculum 8, Anderson 3
TU starting pitcher Brice Anders tossed six strong innings to lead Tusculum to an 8-3 win in the series finale.
The Pioneers spotted Anders (2-1) five runs out of the gate, sparked by four runs in the second inning. TU got on the board when Kayl Ratliff got aboard with a single, moved to third base on Scartz's single and later scored on Absher's sacrifice fly. In the second inning, the Pioneers totaled three hits and took advantage of a pair of AU errors to score four unearned runs and take a 5-0 lead.
The Trojans scratched out a run in the third and had a big inning in the works in the fourth as the first three batters got aboard. But Anders limited the damage to one run and retired three in a row to maintain a 5-2 lead.
The Pioneers tacked on a run each in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings to push out to an 8-2 advantage. Avery Collins drove in Murphy Flood with a two-out double in the fifth. Schmarder led off the sixth with his first career triple and came into score on Luis Reyes' RBI single. Absher legged out a lead-off, infield single in the seventh and later scored on an Anderson error.
Scartz and Keener each posted two hits in the contest for the Pioneers, while Gray Wells was the lone Trojan to finish with a multiple-hit game going 2-for-3.
Anders scattered six hits, allowed three runs, walked three and posted three strikeouts in his 90-pitch performance. Mason Huffstickler recorded the final three outs of the game as he worked around a hit and a walk. AU starter Ben Smith (1-2) suffered the loss as he went five innings and allowed six runs with two of them being earned.
Tusculum travels to Young Harris this Wednesday for a 4 p.m. regional contest against the Mountain Lions.
