The baseball team secured a series sweep against North Florida over the weekend, extending its winning streak to five games during the series that began at Stillwell Stadium on Friday, April 13.
A 3-2 victory opened the series for the Owls with MLB scouts watching the pitching duel between the teams’ two aces. AJ Moore took the mound for the Owls, having held Atlantic Sun conference opponents to a league-leading .239 batting average coming into the game.
Moore pitched a season-high seven innings, allowing three hits and two runs. Terence Norman led the way offensively with three hits and a run batted in while Tyler Simon had a pair of doubles.
“It felt like a lot more than three hits given the people I put on,” Moore said. “I definitely have gotten better throwing from the stretch and minimizing those runs, and that was a big part of this game.”
The Ospreys got going first, taking a 1-0 lead in the third inning, but the Owls responded in the fourth inning with RBI singles by LaDonis Bryant and Norman to give them a 2-1 lead.
After the Ospreys tied the game at 2-2 in the sixth inning, Simon hit his second double of the day, which put the Owls ahead at 3-2.
“We knew we had a pretty good arm going out there against us, probably throwing the best in conference right now,” Moore said. “We just had to stick with our approach and let the hitters do their thing at the plate and play solid defense.”
Saturday’s doubleheader began at noon with a 10-6 win for the Owls. Simon and Norman led the way with three hits each while four players combined for nine RBIs. The game was a back-and-forth affair and included three home runs by the Owls.
With the game tied 6-6 in the eighth inning, the Owls offense came to the forefront yet again. After two runs were scored on a sacrifice fly and an RBI double, Grant Williams sealed the victory with a two-run home run.
“It was a 2-2 count; I was looking for something up,” Williams said. “He had been trying to get me with a breaking ball down and he left it over the middle of the plate, but I put a good swing on it and it went out.”
The Owls clawed their way back for a 7-5 win in the second game of the doubleheader, scoring four runs in the eighth inning to secure the game.
Jake Franklin led the offense, going 4-4 with three home runs and seven RBI’s — Simon and Williams also had home runs Saturday.
When asked about his performance, Franklin was in good spirits: “It’s a good feeling. I was just looking for a pitch in the zone that I could hit hard, and they gave it to me.”
When the game was tied 5-5 with Franklin on third base and Bryant on second, David Chabut knocked in a two-run single to left field, giving the Owls a lead they would carry until the end of the game.
With two out of three games being comeback victories, the message from head coach Mike Sansing was about the importance of learning how to win.
“I think it’s important for our guys to realize that they can handle the close games,” Sansing said. “Hopefully we just learn to keep winning.”
Next up, the Owls play at Georgia Tech on Wednesday, April 18, at 6 p.m.
