JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Lenoir-Rhyne scored three runs in each of the first three innings launching three homers to beat Carson-Newman in the South Atlantic Conference series open 12-4 Friday at the Silver Diamond Baseball Complex.
"It's a really good club," Carson-Newman coach Tom Griffin said. "That's a veteran club. They have a lot of experience and one of the best pitchers in the league. Offensively one through nine you have to bear down. We didn't start out well on the mound. It happens. You can't do that against good clubs and we did and we played catch up. Brock Culpepper did a great job in relief."
After taking the series finale last year, the Bears have won back-to-back games over the Eagles for the second time since 2006 snapping the Eagles' eight-game home SAC winning streak. Carson-Newman (20-18, 12-6) suffers its first home league loss in 41 days while Lenoir-Rhyne (34-9, 15-4) wins for the 12th time in the last 13 games.
Lenoir-Rhyne wasted no time taking a 3-0 lead in the top of the first inning. After a misplayed ball in center field brough in a run on a base hit, Tyler McPeak launched a two-run homer to center field for a two-run blast, his 14th of the year.
A walk and a hit batter opened the Bears' second inning but the next two batters were retired. Sal Carricato cranked a 2-1 offering over the fence in center field to extend the margin to 6-0.
For the third inning in a row, the visitors scored three times expanding the bulge to 9-0. An infield single by Bryce Stober opened the scoring. Mason Maxwell trickled a base hit into left field to bring in the second and an error at shortstop capped the stanza.
Carson-Newman responded by scoring four times in the bottom of the third inning starting with three straight singles including a hopper over the mound by Will Gibbs (Harrisburg, Ill.) to get the Eagles on the board. James Denten (Mt. Prospect, Ill.) lined a single to center to plate a run while the ball was booted another run scored before he touched home on a ground out to trim the tally to 9-4.
After adding a run in the seventh on a base hit by Wade Cuda, the right-handed hitter crushed a two-run homer down the left-field line in the ninth to push it back out to 12-4.
Carson-Newman's bullpen allowed three runs and struck out seven over six stanzas led by four frames from Brock Culpepper (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) matching his season total with five strikeouts.
The Eagles tallied hits in two different innings, the fourth and the ninth, with three of the five knocks coming with a man on base.
Lenoir-Rhyne had the lead-off man on base in eight of nine innings and went 8-for-20 with runners in scoring position for the day. All nine starters tallied a hit and five players drove in a run. Stober and McPeak each had three hits and Cuda and Carricato each drove in three.
The two clubs wrap up the series on Saturday at noon. Coverage airs on FloSports with a paid subscription and on cneagles.com/live with a free audio stream courtesy of the Eagle Sports Network.
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