LAKELAND, Fla.—The No. 4 Southeastern University Fire completed the series sweep against the Warner Royals with two more convincing wins on Saturday. The Fire run-ruled the Royals 19-4 in seven innings in the first game of the doubleheader, before winning 16-10 in the final game of the series.
The Fire now stand at 13-1 on the season, going a perfect 6-0 to start Sun Conference play.
Head Coach
Adrian Dinkel commented on how his team stayed focused even after their game against the Detroit Tigers yesterday, "Tip of the cap to the players. It'd be easy to let down your guard and drop a game but that was the most locked in I've seen us in a long time."
GAME ONE: The Fire homered early and often in game one of the doubleheader, hitting seven over the fences which matched their season-high for home runs in a game.
Luis Cabrera,
Cristian Martin, and
Nick Bottari all homered in the second inning, driving six runs across the plate to give the Fire an early 6-0 lead. After adding three more in the third, Southeastern tallied six more runs in the fourth, four coming off a grand slam from
Cristian Martin.
Blake Buckman added a three-run homer of his own in the fifth to put an exclamation point on game one.
On the mound for Southeastern was Brendan Heiss who improved to 3-1 on the season. Heiss was in a groove early and shutout the Royals through four innings. He ended his outing after five innings of work and only allowed five hits, three earned runs, and struck out two.
GAME TWO: The offenses came to play in the series finale as the teams combined to score 26 runs on 30 base hits. Bottari kicked things off for the Fire with an RBI double to center field that scored
Pedro Castellano. Warner answered back, however, as Southeastern starter
Ronnie Voacolo struggled to get outs early. He lasted only four innings and gave up eight hits, allowing three runs. His teammates picked up the slack for him though, responding with a five-run fourth giving Southeastern an 8-3 lead. Outfielder
Carter Bridge led the charge with a three-run home run and ended the game going 4-for-5 at the plate with 5 RBI's.
Bridge spoke about his approach at the plate, "I'd been struggling the past couple weeks, pressing at the plate and overthinking every little thing. I wanted to take my mentality from the Tigers game and just have fun. It paid off and I was able to do what I'm capable of doing."
Zach Comins came on in relief and allowed four runs, none of them earned, recording three strikeouts in the process. Those four runs came in the sixth, but the Fire responded with five runs of their own. A two-RBI single to left field by
Zach Cornell keyed the inning as all five runs scored with two outs.
Colton Tison came on in relief to shut the door on the Royals, pitching three innings in relief.
Plenty of RBI's to go around today; Martin and Bottari had seven a piece, Bridge and Carbrera each collected four, and Castellano and Cornell drove in three each.
The Fire return to action Tuesday, February 25
th when they host Mount Vernon Nazarene University at 6:30 pm.
