Trojans Blast UALR to Complete Weekend Sweep

Sunday, March 27

Riddle-Pace Field

1:00 pm

Troy University

University of Arkansas - Little Rock

Photo by: Edward Fieder

Trojans Blast UALR to Complete Weekend Sweep

3/27/2011 5:54:51 PM | Baseball

Box Score

By: Ricky Hazel

FINAL BOX SCORE: PDF | HTML POST-GAME AUDIO

The scouting report Troy had going into Sunday's series finale against UALR indicated that runs would be a precious commodity.

The Trojans apparently had other ideas, scoring 10 runs in the first three innings before completing a 13-3 victory over the visitors to complete a weekend Sun Belt Conference sweep.

With the victory, the Trojans completed an 11-game home-stand, the longest since a 12-game stand during the 1990 season, with a 10-1 record. Troy improved to 19-4 overall on the season and moved into a three-way tie with Florida Atlantic and Western Kentucky atop the Sun Belt standings at 5-1 on the year.

UALR fell to 10-13 overall with the loss, 2-4 in league play.

“It is a long conference season, 30 games, so it's way too early to worry about that,” Trojans head coach Bobby Pierce said. “But, I'd rather be at the top than at the bottom any time.”

The sweep of UALR was completed on Sunday after an hour delay before the game because of lightening. During the weekend series the Trojans got offensive contributions up and down the lineup, and finished the weekend with a .383 team batting average in the series.

“I am just proud of our guys,” Pierce said. “The week's worth of work that we put in looks like it paid off for us. We are starting to get some balls in the gaps and out of the park. Hopefully we will continue to get more consistent with that and just continue playing like we are playing. I am just trying to stay out of their way.”

Troy came into Sunday's game expecting more of a challenge from UALR starting pitcher Calvin Drinnen (2-2). Less than two weeks ago the senior pitched a two-hit shutout at Oklahoma to hand the then unbeaten Sooners their first loss of the year.

By the time Sunday's game came to and end by run-rule in the seventh inning, Drinnen was long gone, having not survived the first two innings.

“I was expecting more from him,” Pierce said of Drinnen. “I don't know if he is hurt or not 100 percent, but that was not the guy we had the report on. Our guys just did the job. We warned them about him and told them that he would be really good. He didn't throw as well as we thought he would, but our guys were up for the challenge.”

Troy jumped on Drinnen with four runs in the opening inning. Blake Martz blasted a two-out, two-run homer to start the scoring and, after Logan Pierce walked and Drew Prichard doubled, Josh McDorman singled in two for a 4-0 Troy lead.

The Trojans chased Drinnen, and scored four more runs in the second inning. Prichard had a two-run double and the other runs scored on a bases loaded walk to Pierce and when Todd McRae was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. An RBI single by Martz and run-scoring ground out by Pierce added two more runs for Troy in the third.

UALR got two of those runs back off Troy starter Jimmy Hodgskin (2-1) in the second inning when Greg Garcia hit a two-out, two-run homer. The freshman left-hander became another victim of the hard-hit come-backer in the fourth inning when Hector Acosta hit a line shot off his left biceps.

Austin Atwell followed with a single to plate Myles Parma with the third run of the game for UALR, but Hodgskin got out of the inning without further damage and completed a 1-2-3 fifth to earn the win.

“Jimmy is going to be fine,” Pierce said. “He took a pretty good blow and it was to the throwing side, so it is going to swell. He was able to get through one more inning to get the win and I really didn't even want to go there, but he is a tough kid. We'd have probably gotten into a fight if I'd have tried to take him out before five. You just try to take care of the players, but I gave him one more.”

Sophomore Nathan Hill came on to work what turned out to be the final two innings for Troy.

The Trojans put the game away in the seventh, scoring three times to get to the 10-run margin. Tyler Hannah, who batted .667 with six RBI in the weekend series, doubled in a pair of runs, just missing what would have been a walk-off homer. Three consecutive walks by UALR reliever Andrew Loe forced in the final run.

In all, four UALR pitchers combined to walk 11 Trojans in the series finale. Of those, six eventually came in to score, and three were on base when the game ended.

“I thought we were pretty selective with our strike-zone awareness,” Pierce said. “We just did a lot of good things. When you continue to get the ball off the bat into the gaps and out of the park you are going to score a little more, and today was a good example of that.

Hannah led Troy with three hits on Sunday while Martz and Prichard had two each. Jason Houston was the only UALR player with more than one hit in the game.

The Trojans will venture onto the road for just the third time this season when they travel to face Auburn on Tuesday night. The team will make its first conference road trip next weekend, traveling to Jonesboro to play Arkansas State.

“I really don't know what direction we are going to go in on Tuesday,” Pierce said. “It will probably be a short stint for a lot of pitchers, with a chance to give them some experience. If we swing the bats and score some runs, we'll be fine.”

The game between the Trojans and Tigers on Tuesday night is scheduled for a 6 p.m. start at Plainsman Park.