Pride stay hot with two more decisive wins at final day of Cajun Collision

STERLINGTON, La. - Coming off of a quality all-around performance in Friday's opening day of the Cajun Collision, the Clarke University baseball team went beyond with their performance in a pair of wins on Saturday. 

The "at a glance" highlights of the day are scoring 19 runs in a 19-0 win over Wayland Baptist University and earning a victory over the No. 19 team in the NAIA preseason rankings in University of Sciences and Arts of Oklahoma by a 6-2 final. 

Both opponents came into the day with only two losses each as the Pioneers came in at 8-2 and the Drovers entered the Collision at 4-2 while CU showed they didn't need to score first against USAO, trailing 1-0 after the top of the second but quickly came back to make it 2-1 on a Victor Lara two-RBI single in the bottom half of the inning. 

The Pride would then tack on a single run in both the fourth and fifth innings on balls that got by the Drovers' catcher then they would extend to 6-1 on an RBI double from Bubba Thompson then an RBI single from Paul Von Zboray.

That would be enough for another stellar performance from Isaac Rohde as the lefty threw his second complete games of the season with a career-high 14 strikeouts while both runs allowed were of the unearned variety. 

The 19-0 trouncing of Wayland Baptist started with a single run in the first inning on another Lara RBI single as Clarke would progress to score runs in each inning with a pair of six-run innings in both the third and sixth innings. 

Most of the scoring came from putting balls in play but the big blast of the day came off the bat of Kieron Crowder as the Keiser University transfer hit a three-run home run in the fourth inning to make it 12-0 at the time. 

Those 19 runs was obviously plenty for the three-man combination of Johnny Blake, Nic Cortez, and Ethan James as Blake started and went five innings, allowing the only three hits for the Pioneers while striking out five, Cortez struck out all three batters he faced and James only allowed a single baserunner on a hit by pitch.

Clarke baseball will return to Dubuque for a weekend off before heading back south for a three-game series against William Crey University in Hattiesburg, Miss. on Feb. 24-25.