By Erica Fox
Reporter
March 24, 2006
The Milligan Baseball team split their Appalachian Athletic Conference double header with King College on Saturday, winning the first game 15-5 and losing the second game 6-2.
After a scoreless first inning in game one, Milligan took the lead in the second inning, scoring three runs. Junior first baseman Kory Kinnear and junior third baseman Todd Sangid each had a single hit in the second inning. Kinnear went on to score on a throwing error. Junior Ben Huff hit a homerun, bringing in three runs for the Buffs.
King started coming back in innings three, four and five, scoring one run in the third, two in the fourth and two in the fifth. Milligan scored again in the fourth inning when Huff hit a sacrifice fly to score courtesy runner, junior Cody Whitlock.
King proved to be no match for the Buffaloes, who scored ten runs in the fifth inning, bringing the score to 14-5. Freshman Spencer Street walked and Dave Rusaw hit a two- run homerun. Junior Jon Edmonds, senior Will Little, freshman Tyler Turner and Sangid had one single each, while Kinnear had two before the inning ended.
Junior Brett Seybert pitched a complete game, striking out five, walking one and allowing five runs.
The Buffs went on to score one more run in the seventh inning to end the game by slaughter rule.
Unfortunately the momentum from game one did not carry over into game two, which ended in a 6-2 defeat for the Buffs.
“Double headers are a funny thing,” Seybert said. “I think in the first game, we saw early on that we were kind of in a slugfest and that we were going to need a lot of runs to win. Unfortunately, it seems like that pressure to score in the first game wore on us a bit, and we were kind of tapped out when the second game came around.”
Next up for Milligan is a conference game tomorrow at Brevard, but the Buffs will play minus one team member. Junior Justin Sauceman sustained a hamstring injury at practice last week which may keep him off the field for the remainder of the season.
“Losing Sauceman is a tough pill to swallow,” Seybert said. “He was a consistent run producer for us in the middle of the lineup, and had really just started to get into his groove at the plate.”
“This is a blow to the team, so we will have to step it up and work even harder,” Kinnear said.