Trojans Drop 12 Inning Heartbreaker

Wednesday, March 11

Jacksonville, Fla.

6:00 PM

Troy University

North Florida

3/11/2009 5:00:00 AM | Baseball

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Troy had to battle from behind all night against North Florida but, in the end, it was the Ospreys who battled back, scoring twice in the bottom of the 12th inning, to take a 10-9 victory over the Trojans Wednesday night at Harmon Stadium.

The Trojans (9-5) fell behind 6-0 through the first five innings, but battled back, scoring two in the sixth, three in the seventh and three in the ninth, forcing the game into extra innings.

But just as Troy battled back all night, North Florida (6-9) battled just as hard. Even after coughing up the lead in the 12th inning, the Ospreys came right back.

"Give North Florida credit," Troy assistant coach Mark Smartt, who served as team spokesman with head coach Bobby Pierce suffering from a bout of laryngitis, said. "They treated this game like it was a must-win, and they battled hard all night. We try to treat every game as if it is a must-win, which is why we are proud of the way we fought our way back into this game."

The Trojans had a chance to blow the game open in the 12th against the seventh, eighth and ninth pitchers of the evening for UNF. Kristopher Linster opened the inning on the mound for UNF, and surrendered a leadoff double to Brett Henry before getting a ground out from Charley Williams, moving Henry, the go-ahead run, to third.

UNF coach Dusty Rhodes called Matt Boyd to the mound, but he promptly walked Miles Hoyle and surrendered an infield single to Shohei Fujita to score Henry, giving the Trojans their first lead to 9-8.

Rhodes went back to the mound with another reliever, Mike Gottlieb, warming in the pen, but he instead called on his redshirt freshman third baseman, Andrew Karmeris (1-0), to go to the mound to face Steven Felix in his collegiate pitching debut.

The moved turned out to be genius, as Karmeris struck out Felix for the second out of the inning. He turned up the drama, however, by hitting Chad Watson, to load the bases for J.R. Myers, who already owned four hits in the game.

Instead of faltering in the face of a pressure-packed moment, Karmeris struck out Myers to end the Troy scoring threat, leaving UNF with a one-run deficit heading to the bottom of the inning.

Troy called on senior left-hander Travis Burge (1-1) to come on to pitch the bottom of the inning in relief of junior Chris Sorce, who was the fifth Troy pitcher in the game. Sorce came on to pitch in the eighth with Troy trailing 8-5 and worked 3.2 shutout innings.

The first batter Burge had to face was none other than Karmeris, who greeted the Troy hurler rudely with a double to the wall in center. T.J. Thompson followed with a single up the middle to score Karmeris and knot the game again at 9-9.

Catcher David Eldredge followed with another hit, putting the winning run at second.

Troy called on sophomore Drew Hull to pitch, and appeared set to get out of trouble when Hull fielded a sacrifice bunt attempt by freshman Alex Rodriguez and threw out Thompson at third.

But the Ospreys got the biggest hit of the night, their 19th, when Justin Preckajlo got a ground ball past the glove of Henry down the third base line to score Eldredge with the winning run. The game-winning hit was the fifth of the night for the junior.

"North Florida played a very aggressive brand of baseball tonight," Smartt said. "They got a lot of leadoff hitters on base (eight) and were aggressive bunting to get those runners into scoring position.

"We hung in there and got some great at bats late in the game. I think that is a sign of the type of players we have in that they hung in there and battled all the way. This team continues to compete, no matter what the score is."

Myers' four hits paced the Trojans' 13-hit attack, but Troy left 11 runners on base in the game. Henry, Michael Precise and Fujita had two hits each for the Trojans.

Brian Wilson and Preckajlo had five hits each for UNF, which had just three extra-base hits out of 19. The Ospreys put together a number of infield hits and choppers that bounded over the infield in the game, and left a total of 16 runners on base.

Karmeris had three hits for the Ospreys and Eldredge had two.

The Trojans will return home to start a seven-game home-stand at Riddle-Pace Field on Friday night when LeMoyne comes in to start a three-game series. The first pitch on Friday and Saturday is set for 6 p.m.

"After a week in Florida, we are all looking forward to getting back home and to playing in front of our home crowd," Smartt said. "We don't know yet what kind of team LeMoyne has, but we are looking forward to playing them."