MEDIA CONTACT: Jonathan Fraysure
561-430-7148, jfraysur@fau.edu
FAU Baseball Gets Off the Schneid with Win over Monmouth
BOCA RATON, Fla. – (March 1, 2019) – Four home runs – including a come-from-behind grand slam by Bobby Morgensen – accounted for all of the Owls’ runs and propelled Florida Atlantic University baseball to an 8-4 win over Monmouth on Friday night, snapping the team’s six-game losing streak in the process.
Quotable
Head Coach John McCormack:
“It was a good game, it’s nice to get back on the right side of the win column. We hit some balls out of the park, I thought Sandy (Blake Sanderson) pitched good enough, and DC (Dylan Carter) did what he was supposed to do, so it was a good win. Good to be back in the win column.”
The Turning Point
Monmouth (1-6) scored twice in the first, but the Owls (3-6) quickly erased the deficit after Eric Rivera doubled and Gunnar Lambert deposited a two-run home run to right in the bottom half. Another Hawk run scored in the second, and a fourth in the sixth, pushing the visitor’s lead back out to 4-2. But in the home sixth, Pedro Pages and Andru Summerall singled, followed by a hit-by-pitch of Joe Montes to load the bases. Morgensen then blasted a towering shot out to right-center to give the Owls a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
The Finish
Insurance came in the form of back-to-back homers by Rivera and Lambert to lead off the bottom of the seventh. Though the Hawks added a two-out ninth-inning run, Dylan Carter induced a groundout to complete a three-inning save and break the Owls’ losing streak.
The Arms
· Blake Sanderson (2-0) got the win, going six innings for the third straight Friday. He struck out a career-high nine Hawks and, at one point, retired 10 in a row, and 12 of 13
· Carter had his longest outing as an Owl, recording his first FAU save
The Bats
· Morgensen’s grand slam is the third in 10 games for FAU. The team had four slams in 62 total games in 2018
· Lambert notched the first two-homer game by an Owl in the new year, and Rivera and Lambert posted the first back-to-back home runs of 2019
· Lambert and Rivera combined for five hits in the top two spots in the lineup, of the team’s nine; Friday marked Lambert’s first three-hit game of the season and fifth multi-hit game, and Rivera’s third multi-hit game in his last four
· Rivera is hitting .500 over that span (9-for-18)
· Montes extended his season-opening streak of reaching base to all 10 games
What’s Next
Saturday is a 4 p.m. first pitch, with the mound matchup featuring Ryan Sandberg against Monmouth’s Ryan Steckline. Get tickets 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.
