MEDIA CONTACT: Jonathan Fraysure, jfraysur@fau.edu
BOCA RATON, Fla. – (March 17, 2019) – For the second straight game, the Florida Atlantic University baseball team pushed across 12 runs on 16 hits, routing Rice by a 12-4 score on Sunday to take a three-game sweep of the visiting Owls on Conference USA opening weekend, and win FAU’s eighth game in a row overall.
Quotable
Head Coach John McCormack:
“Really good way to finish off a weekend sweep to open conference play against Rice … Offense in the first inning, Andru (Summerall) getting the double, and then Pedro (Pages) getting the two-run homer was really good to get us off. I thought we played really well all day, guys were into the game. They kept chipping away and we just kept answering.”
The Turning Point
With two outs in the FAU (14-7, 3-0 C-USA) first, Francisco Urbaez singled, Andru Summerall doubled him in, and Pedro Pages crushed a two-out homer to left. Another two scored in the second to extend the lead, but Rice (8-14, 0-3 C-USA) would cut it to 5-2 with one out in the fifth. With the bases loaded and one out, so the tying run at first and go-ahead run at the plate, reliever Dylan O’Connell notched a strikeout of Andrew Dunlap, and then got Justin Collins to line out to keep the three-run margin.
The Finish
From there, it was pretty much all FAU. The team recorded sacrifice flies in the each of the next three innings, and tacked on four more runs (including another sac fly) in their final at-bat in the eighth. Six FAU pitchers combined to record 13 strikeouts, and scatter seven Rice hits, with zeroes thrown up in the eighth and the ninth for an eighth straight win (and 11 in the last 12).
The Arms
· Nick Swan (1-0), in his first outing of 2019, was superb. He allowed just one hit in two innings, and struck out four of the six batters he retired
· Following was Ryan Sandberg, with the longest outing of the FAU six, going 2 1/3 with two more K’s
· O’Connell retired two with a punchout in the crucial fifth
· Two walks hampered Jon Jon Kosantis’ outing, though he too had two strikeouts
· Vince Coletti finished out the seventh and pitched a scoreless eight, striking out three
· Closing it out was Michael Schuler, with a hit against him, but otherwise going strike out-groundout-lineout
The Bats
· Both the runs (12) and hits (16) matched not only Saturday, but again, FAU’s season high
· Urbaez went 3-for-5 to close out a series that saw him hit .615 (8-for-13) and slug .846. On Sunday, he scored twice and knocked in a run
· Also with three hits was Pages, for the second straight game. He was 3-for-4 with four runs scored (one off the program record in a game), plus three RBI
· Mitchell Hartigan and Wilfredo Alvarez both had two hits, and both knocked in two runs. Also with two RBI was Summerall, while Jared DeSantolo also had a two-hit day
· The five sac flies, just two off an all-time NCAA record, came from Summerall, Hartigan, Urbaez, BJ Murray and Richie Nizza
What’s Next
It’s four straight road games for the Owls, starting Tuesday with a trek to the west coast to take on Florida Gulf Coast at 6:30 p.m. Next weekend, the team takes its first out-of-state trip, playing at UAB in Birmingham, Alabama, Friday-Sunday. The return to FAU Baseball Stadium comes on March 27, a Wednesday, hosting Miami at 6:30 p.m. Tickets to that premium game are available by calling 1-866-FAU-OWLS.
– FAUSports.com –
Florida Atlantic University Athletics:
FAU Athletics is comprised of 21 intercollegiate teams involving 450 student-athletes that compete in baseball, basketball, cross country, football, golf, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track, volleyball, beach volleyball, cheer and dance. The Owls are a NCAA Division I-A (FBS) institution and compete in Conference USA and the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA) (beach volleyball, men’s swimming). The Owls have been playing football since 2001 and are a perfect 3-0 in bowl games, the most recent being a 50-3 victory over Akron in the 2017 Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl. The dance team finished its 2014 season No. 8, nationally. FAU cheer won a national championship in 2016.
About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six county service region in southeast Florida. FAU’s world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of critical areas that form the basis of its strategic plan: Healthy aging, biotech, coastal and marine issues, neuroscience, regenerative medicine, informatics, lifespan and the environment. These areas provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU’s existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.
