Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Maroon comes back to win fall world series
10/13/2008 | 12:00:00 | Baseball
Oct. 13, 2008
By Jeff Honza
www.SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. - The maroon team won the final two games to clinch Southern Illinois University's intrasquad fall world series. The maroon team entered the weekend trailing, 2-1, in the series, but battled back to beat the black team by scores of 7-6 and 3-0.
In Sunday's series finale, the maroon team wasted no time going to work on Adam Curynski.
Chris Murphy hit the game's first pitch for a triple down the right field line and scored on an ensuing single by Scott Elmendorf. An error and another base hit, this time a single by Mark Kelly, helped get the maroon squad a 2-0 lead in the first.
Chase Sanford's two-out single knocked in Kelly for the final run to polish off the 3-0 win in the fifth inning.
Nathan Forer, David Kington, Neil Hudson and Daniel Wells combined on the three-hit shutout for the maroon. The maroon pitching staff also recorded a total of eight strikeouts on the day.
Forer earned the win, while Curynski suffered the loss.
In game four Saturday, the black team blew a three-run lead, allowing the maroon team to force a fifth game.
Chris Serritella's two-RBI single helped give the black team an early 3-0 cushion in the second.
The maroon team, sparked by a solid outing on the mound from sophomore Daniel Etienne, started to chip away at the black team's lead when Kelly delivered a run-scoring single in the third.
Etienne, who kept the black team's hitters in check by only allowing one unearned run, saw his offense tie the game with three runs in the fourth.
Sanford led off with a single and went to second on a sacrifice bunt by Murphy. Elmendorf then walked to load the bases. Back-to-back singles by Stalter and Kelly pushed two runs across, before Stalter touched home to tie the game at 4-4 on Tom Cerven's base hit.
The maroon team added two more runs in fifth and another in the sixth to extend its lead to 7-4. Both fifth-inning runs scored via a two-out double by Murphy.
The black team made things interesting when RBI-hits by Tony Lepore and Serritella narrowed the lead to 7-6 in the sixth, but it wasn't enough.
Etienne was credited with the win and Kevin Cover took the loss. Kellen Candau earned the save.
Offensively, Stalter led the maroon team with three hits. Lepore and Serritella paved the way for the black team with two hits apiece.
The five-game world series marked the end of SIU's fall practices.
