Big Inning Powers Troy Past UNO

Saturday, April 24

New Orleans, La.

7:00 pm

Troy University

New Orleans

4/25/2010 4:00:00 AM | Baseball

New Orleans, La. – Troy University sophomore Tyler Ray's confidence was waning after consecutive bad outings in his last two Sun Belt Conference starts.

Consider that blip on his career record over.

Ray pitched eight shutout innings Saturday evening against New Orleans and was bolstered by an 11-run fifth inning from the Trojans offense in a 15-0 rout of the homestanding Privateers.

The Trojans improved to 20-19 overall and 7-10 in Sun Belt Conference play with the victory. UNO falls to 10-28 overall and 2-18 in league play. The Trojans will go for the weekend sweep on Sunday afternoon at Maestri Field, with the first pitch slated for 1 p.m.

Ray (5-3) had worked a total of 5.2 innings in his last two starts, allowing 14 runs on 10 hits against UL Lafayette and Middle Tennessee. Against UNO, Ray walked just one and scattered seven hits while striking out four.

“Obviously, he was throwing much better than he did the last couple of weeks,” Trojans coach Bobby Pierce said. “It is obvious that his hard work is beginning to pay off, but he still has work to do to be more consistent, but he threw a lot more quality pitches tonight.

“He seemed to have much more confidence in what he was doing and, after eight innings of shutout baseball, he should be feeling pretty good about his outing. Hopefully, this will spur him on to continue working because in his next start he will see a much better hitting team than the one he saw tonight.”

Senior Tim Wheeler, who was on the mound the last time the Trojans posted a shutout victory, came on in relief of Ray in the ninth and recorded a pair of strikeouts around a walk. It was just the second outing for Wheeler following a broken jaw before the season started.

Wheeler pitched a complete-game shutout against UALR in April of 2008, which was the last shutout win for Troy.

“Tim looked good and his slider was there tonight, and that is his money pitch,” Pierce said. “Tim has been working hard too, and it looks like his work is beginning to pay off. Tim is still trying to get his strength back, but I thought he threw the ball well tonight.”

Offensively, the Trojans took advantage of every opportunity offered by the UNO pitching staff and the Privateers' defense. Of the 15 runs scored by Troy in the game, seven were unearned, and four more were unearned for the team.

It was an error in the second inning that opened the door, allowing senior Miles Hoyle to get a chance to hit against UNO starter John Pivach (0-6). Hoyle took advantage, hitting a two-run homer, his second in as many games.
Troy added a run in the third without an error when T.J. Rivera singled home Chase Whitley, who had reached on a hit. Whitley then got things started in the 11-run fifth with a two-run homer, but it was an error that opened the floodgates.

Rivera, who reached on all three UNO errors in the game, reached on a ground ball to short with one out. What followed was a disaster for UNO pitching. Three Trojans were hit by pitches, five reached on walks and four others had hits.

In all, 17 men came to the plate in the inning. In addition to Whitley's homer and Adam Bryant had a two-run triple. Reliever Justin Cromartie gave up four of the runs in the inning for UNO without retiring a hitter.

“We did a little better job tonight, but we were still out of the strike zone too much,” Pierce said of the Troy hitters. “They brought in the left-hander in the fifth, and he really struggled. Their starter was wearing down and we did a much better job in that inning. We got some balls off the bat, including the one by Adam Bryant that I remember as the back-breaker.”

Troy capped the scoring in the sixth inning when Steven Felix lined his 11th homer of the year over the wall in right.

Whitley led the Trojans with four hits while Rivera added three. Ryan Eden had two of the Privateers' seven hits in the game. The Privateers managed to get a runner to third base just once in the game.

“We got everything we wanted tonight,” Pierce said. “I was pleased with the effort, we got a better outing from Tyler, played good defense and scored a lot of runs. It was a good night.”