Sacrifice Fly Lifts Baseball to Tournament Opening Win
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.—Down 5-3 with just two outs left, Southeastern rattled off three runs in the bottom of the ninth to win the opening game of The Sun Conference Tournament over Florida Memorial.
Stephen Cullen's sacrifice fly gave the Fire a 6-5 win over the Lions to improve to 48-3 and advance to play at 2:30 tomorrow against St. Thomas or Webber International.
"We're going to take wins during tournament time anyway we can get them," said coach
Adrian Dinkel. "You have to tip your cap to (Florida Memorial's) starting pitcher (Ricardo Alvarez) and we need to do a better job with pitch selection. I was proud of our guys for not rolling over early."
Southeastern (48-3) trailed by five after five innings with the Lions getting on the board in the second on a sacrifice fly and took advantage of three Fire errors in the third to plate three more, and an RBI single in the fifth.
Josh Pigozzo's two-out double in the seventh got the Fire on the board for the first time, scoring Cullen who was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning.
Isaac Nunez brought home Pigozzo with a single to left.
Gary Lora made it a three-run inning with a double down the right field line to score Nunez from second. A walk to
Chayce Bryant loaded the bases, but a fly ball ended the threat.
Nunez picked up a one-out double in the ninth for his third hit of the game and was followed by a hit by pitch to
Adonys Herrera. Lora brought home Nunez with a single to left, and Bryant scored Herrera with a single to right.
Pablo Lanzarote was intentionally walked to get to Cullen who came through with the game-ending hit.
"We have a lot of competitors in that dugout and it shows at the end of games," said Dinkel. "They did a really good job narrowing our focus and controlling what we can control."
Andrew Long picked up his sixth win of the season, allowing one earned run over 6.2 innings of work with five strikeouts.
Lora finished 3-for-5 with a pair of RBIs. Bryant added two hits.
