Baseball opens season with three wins
By Mike Scott
Old Gold and Black Reporter

> February 16, 2001

The guys look good. Very good.

The Diamond Deacs, thanks in large part to the contributions of freshmen, swept their opening three games of the season Feb. 9-11. The team took the first game against James Madison University, and the last two against Penn State University.

With staff ace senior Scott Siemon taking the mound in the season opener, the Deacons had to feel confident about their prospects of opening the year with a win. That confidence took a hit in the second inning when JMU put 5 runs on the board. But, while freshmen would prove to contribute much this weekend, this team still has plenty of experienced leaders. Seniors Jason Aquilante and Corey Slavik helped restore the club’s confidence, each belting a home run as the Deacons came back in the bottom of the second with six runs. Much like in the final game of the weekend, the Deacons showed no panic whatsoever after the early set back, and from there Siemon and the bullpen handled things quite nicely, giving up no runs and only three hits the rest of the way. Siemon pitched through the sixth without incident, then handed the ball to freshman Adam Hanson, who threw two shutout innings before junior closer Dave Bush was brought in to seal the deal, only needing six pitches to retire the side in the ninth.

Freshman Josh Hansen led the Deacon offense over the final six innings, finishing the game with three hits, two RBI and a home run in his first collegiate appearance, helping the team tack six more on to its second inning total to finish the game with a 12-5 win.

The next day at Hooks Stadium saw the defending Big 10 Champion Penn State Nittany Lions come to town for a two game set.

The story of the first game was again the mix of experience and youth. Freshman Kyle Sleeth made his college debut on the mound, and made it a strong one, pitching six shutout innings, allowing only two hits and finishing with four strikeouts. Freshman Jamie D’Antona, who went 3-3 with three doubles, three runs scored and 2 RBI, and senior Cory Sullivan, who started the Deacon attack with a lead-off homer in the bottom of the first and finished 4-5 with 3 RBI, provided the offense.

The Deacs did most of their damage in the bottom of the sixth, scoring six runs on five hits and one error, putting them ahead 8-0. While the game was pretty well in control for the majority of the game, the club did have a scare in the top of the eighth, when things got a little out of hand as Deacon hurlers gave up five runs on two hits and two errors, including walking in four runs with the bases loaded. It took the appearance of Bush to settle things down. After walking in a run against his first batter with one out, Bush struck out the next two hitters to end the threat, then went on pitch a one, two, three ninth to close the door. Head Coach George Greer was very impressed by Sleeth’s performance in his first start, and looks for many freshmen to contribute this year.

“He (Sleeth) is a very impressive young man, and he’s just going to get better and better. We feel that he’s going to be one of our top pitchers for a long time,” Greer said. “(D’Antona) is a very good player and Josh Hansen is a very good player. We feel that some of the other freshmen that we have are really going to contribute, not only this year, but in the future.”

In the next game, though, the Demon Deacons would not find the going quite as easy as in the first two.

After scoring one run in the bottom of the second, and giving up two in the top of the third, the Deacs found runs difficult to come by, and were held to that one run through seven innings. But their pitchers kept them in the game, with freshman Adam Hanson pitching 3.2 scoreless innings in relief of starter Ryan Braun to get the Deacs through the top of the eighth. With the team was still down a run, with only six outs left. Then, all of a sudden, the club found its bats when they needed them.

Sullivan got on base to lead off the inning when he was hit by a pitch. Senior Nick Blue proceeded to sacrifice him over to second with a bunt. The strategy paid off when Hansen followed with an RBI double down the left field line, scoring Sullivan from second and evening things up. Then Slavik followed that with a single to right, giving the Deacs runners at the corners with only one out.

After a pitching change by Penn State, senior Matt Price drove in the go-ahead run with a sac fly to right, which scored Hansen.

After that inning ended all that was left was to again give the ball to Bush, who was his usual stellar self, retiring the side in order to ensure the win, and earning himself a save in his first opportunity of the season. The fact that not a single person in the Deacon dugout seemed at all worried can be attributed to the team’s mindset.

“We try to think of our games, all our games, during the game, as not getting too high at one point or getting too low at another point. We try to maintain an even keel as much as possible, because baseball is 27 outs, you can’t hold the ball, you can’t dribble it, you can’t run out the clock,” Greer said. “You have to play, you have to get 27 outs. If you look at college baseball games, nine innings versus seven innings, you find a lot of scores change dramatically in the eighth and ninth inning, and we had all our good hitters coming up, we had the top of the lineup coming up, so we felt really good about it.”

While many newcomers contributed largely to the wins, what may be most important is that the veterans continue the outstanding play they displayed over the weekend.

“If you look at a team and you look for leadership, we don’t have a lot of ‘ra-ra’ people, but we have a lot of leadership by example,” Greer said. “We’ve got a lot of experience and we’ve got a lot of people who we can rely on, and if one guy doesn’t do it this time, someone else will step up and take their place.”

The Deacs will now move to Houston, Tx., for a tournament at Rice University, where the Deacs will face nationally ranked teams in Central Florida and Rice, as well as Purdue. While Greer would obviously like to win, his focus is not on moving up in the polls.

“It’s always nice to get national attention, but we’re trying to get our team ready for the ACC season, by playing quality opponents like we did last weekend with James Madison and Penn State, and real quality opponents this weekend with Central Florida and Rice and Purdue,” Greer said. “Of course want to win every game, we want to have a great RPI and we want to represent the school and the conference as well as possible, and we will try to win every game. We’re not experimenting to throw games away, by any stretch of the imagination; we’re going to win every game we can. But, it’s always nice to find out what people can do and its better to play great competition than not to play great competition at this time of year.”

One thing is for sure: if the guys keep producing the way they are, the future, and the present, looks pretty good.