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March 23, 2008

Box Score

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- When the Rice pitching staff perhaps needed it the most, senior right-hander Chris Kelley stepped up and held heavy-hitting Marshall to just a single run for a 7.1 innings to help the 11th-ranked Owls complete the three-game sweep of the Conference USA series with a 7-1 victory over the Thundering Herd Sunday afternoon at Appalachian Power Park in Charleston, W.Va.

Rice won the first two games of the weekend road series, but had to use eight different pitchers against a Marshall team that entered the C-USA lid-lifter as one of the top slugging teams in the league. In just his third start of the season Kelley came up big with his longest outing of the year that gave the bullpen some rest. The Sugar Land, Tex., native scattered seven hits and one walk while allowing just one run that was unearned. He struck out a season-high five batters to improve his record to 2-1. Kelley was relieved by freshman Matt Evers in the bottom of the eighth, who worked the final 1.2 scoreless frames with two strikeouts. The Owls, now 17-6 overall with nine-straight wins, remained atop the conference standings with a 3-0 C-USA record.

Both starting pitchers sliced through the batting order the first time through, but in the top of the of the fourth Diego Seastrunk singled up the middle for the team's first hit. Aaron Luna followed with a double off the left field wall and Seastrunk scored from first. Luna came home on a single through the left side by Rick Hague for a 2-0 lead.

The Owls came back for two more runs in the fifth to stretch the margin to 4-0. Each of the first three batters reached base after leadoff single by Jimmy Comerota, Derek Myers was hit by a pitch and Jared Gayhart walked to put men on every station. Seastrunk lifted a sacrifice fly to right to score Comerota while Myers moved up to third base. A Marshall wild pitch plated Myers for two runs on just one hit.

The Blue & Gray didn't need any hits for another run in the sixth. Comerota walked and stole second to move into scoring position. Back-to-back fielding errors helped Comerota make his way home to make it a 5-0 game.

Marshall's lone run of the contest was with two outs in the in the seventh. Texas native Brandon Casamassima doubled down the left field line and Kenny Socorro followed with a hit to the left side. Rice made an attempt to try to retire the batter, but Socorro beat it out and all the runners advanced an extra base when the throw went wide. Evers struck out the next batter and the threat was over.

Rice added two more insurance runs in the ninth on four more hits for the 7-1 final score. Marshall fell to 8-11 overall and 0-3 in conference. The Owls, now 47-4 in 51 league games as a member of C-USA, are past the halfway point of the current five-game road swing. Rice next meets Texas State in San Marcos on Tuesday (Mar. 25), followed by crosstown rival Houston at UH's Cougar Field on Wednesday. The start times for both games is 6:30 pm.