Pride suffer pair of walk off losses to wrap up Georgia trip

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - In a pair of exciting, down to the wire games hosted in Lawrenceville, Ga., the Clarke University baseball team dropped both of their games Saturday in their opponent's final at bats in a 5-4 loss to Lourdes University and a 7-6 loss to Georgia Gwinnett College.

The Pride led 1-0 on a second inning Tommy Peterson RBI squeeze bunt heading into the seventh inning against the Gray Wolves before they tied it up with a leadoff triple and a one-out wild pitch to take the game into extra innings. 

Maguire Fitzgerald was able to keep Lourdes off the board in the eighth and ninth innings after pitching in relief of Johnny Blake's 7.1-inning outing where he allowed that seventh inning run on three hits and five walks with six strikeouts. 

Clarke would then retake a lead at 4-1 in the 10th as a double steal would help CU score a run to take a 2-1 lead then a Greg Bennett single drove in a pair to bump their lead to 4-1. Lourdes was down to their final out then produced back-to-back doubles to knock Fitzgerald out for Nic Cortez at a 4-3 score as the Gray Wolves would score on a wild pitch to tie it then walk it off on an RBI single from Hunter Mix.

Both Bennett and Victor Lara went 3-for-5 in the game with Bennett finishing with those two RBIs as Fitzgerald, Bubba Thompson, and Daniel Phyle had the remaining three hits for the Pride in the game.

In their weekend finale, Clarke went back and forth with No. 7 Georgia Gwinnett starting with a 2-0 CU lead in the first capped by a Paul Von Zboray RBI single as that lead woudl hold into the second before the Grizzlies tied it up on a two-RBI double from Cohen Wilbanks.

Thompson would answer for the Pride with an RBI double of his own to make it 3-2 but then the teams would trade two-run home runs, first from GGC's Devin Warner then from Thompson for his third big fly of the season as the fifth inning strike made it 5-4 CU.

Wilbanks would double home another run to tie it then the Grizzlies would take another lead, this time on an error heading into the seventh where Clarke would tie the game up on a wild pitch to take it to the bottom of the seventh at 6-6.

Georgia Gwinnett was the first team to get to Clarke lefty Isaac Rohde as the senior pitched all six innings, giving up the walk off home run to Jon Ponder to lead off the seventh and win the game for GGC. Rohde finished his six-inning outing allowing the seven runs, six earned, on eight hits, and two walks with 11 strikeouts to continue his streak of double digit strikeout performances to start the season through four outings.

Pride baseball will now head to Heart of America Athletic Conference play next weekend with a road trip to Olathe, Kan. for a four-game set against MidAmerica Nazarene University on Mar. 10-11.