SALISBURY, N.C. --- Lincoln Memorial homered five times in the game including three times in a 6-run sixth inning to lead the fifth-seeded Railsplitters to a 16-13 win over No. 4 seed Tusculum in the first game of the 2024 South Atlantic Conference Baseball Championship – Opening Round.
The four-team, double-elimination pod is being held at Newman Park and hosted by Catawba College.
Tusculum will play the loser of Friday's Catawba / Lenoir-Rhyne game on Saturday in a 2:45 p.m. elimination game.
LMU (31-15) overcame a 7-5 deficit with a six-run eruption in the sixth and tacked on five more in the eighth. They would need that insurance as Tusculum (25-25) scored twice in the eighth and four times in the ninth and had the tying run on deck when the game ended.
LMU's Collin Coda led the charge with his 4-for-6 outing including his home run to start the game. Al Kowalski added three hits with two doubles and a home run as he totaled four RBI. SAC Player of the Year Carson Boles also had a four RBI outing, which included his three-run homer in the sixth as the Railsplitters regained the lead.
Tusculum finished the game with 18 hits as every Pioneer recorded a hit including Ben Scartz who went 3-for-3 with two RBI. Zach Wilson also had a 3-hit performance while Zane Keener, Luis Reyes, Murphy Flood and Blaze McCauley tallied two hits apiece.
Lincoln Memorial jumped out to a 5-0 lead to start the game, scoring twice in the first and three times in the third frame. Coda belted the second pitch of the game over the left field wall for his fourth home of the season. Boles drew a one-out walk, stole second and scored on Kowalski's double for a 2-0 lead.
The Pioneers were poised to respond in the bottom of the first as TU loaded the bases with one out, but an inning-ending double play kept Tusculum off the scoreboard.
Kowalski's second double of the game drove in a pair to highlight a three-run, third inning as LMU extended the lead to 5-0.
Tusculum got off the matt as 12 Pioneers went to the plate in a seven-run outburst in the fourth inning. Scartz was hit by a pitch and moved to third on Flood's 12th double of the season. Omar Carreras fly ball was deep enough to score Scartz for TU's first run. McCauley came through with a clutch, two-out single to drive in a pair of runs to trim the deficit to 5-3. Wilson doubled to right field to move McCauley to third and Keener posted a two-run single to tie the game at 5-5.
Reyes drew a walk and Scartz followed with his team-leading 14th double to score Reyes and Keener as Tusculum led 7-5.
In the bottom of the fifth, Will Samuelson got aboard with a double. Later in the inning with two outs, Wilson singled but Samuelson was thrown out at the plate to end the inning.
In the top of the sixth, Chris Hall led off with his team-leading eighth triple of the year. Sam Mast followed with his game-tying, two-run homer to left field to knot the game at 7-7.
Coda posted his third hit of the day with his one-out single before the game was halted due to a lightning delay which lasted over an hour.
When play resumed, Katen Harvey hit a single and Boles stepped up and hit a three-run homer to centerfield as LMU led 10-7. Bowen had his bid for extra bases thwarted when Keener made a diving catch in the left field corner for the second out of the inning. Kowalski followed with a solo home run to extend the lead to 11-7.
LMU scored five important runs in the eighth, utilizing five hits and three Tusculum errors to move out to a 16-7 advantage.
TU would chip away at the deficit as Reyes drew his second walk of the game and moved to third on Kayl Ratliff's pinch-hit double. Both would score on Flood's two-run single to center as the LMU lead was cut to 16-9.
In TU ninth, the Pioneers got four straight singles from McCauley, Wilson, Keener and Reyes to start the frame. Reyes infield single drove in the first run of the inning. Ratliff would strike out and Flood drove in the inning's second run with his sacrifice fly. With two outs, Carreras doubled to right field to drive in two more runs as Tusculum trailed 16-13 and had the tying run on deck. Carter White took over on the mound and got the final out of the game to secure the save.
Colin Murphy (5-2) pitched three shutout innings in relief to record the victory. Tusculum's Jonathan Nelson (1-3) suffered the loss in his 1 1/3 innings on the mound.
Keener extends his on-base streak to 27 consecutive games and scored two runs to give him 163 for his career which are tied for fourth in program history.
Flood's sacrifice fly was the 11th of his career, moving him into a tie for seventh place in the TU record book.
