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Owls Fall To East Carolina 4-3 At 2008 Entergy C-USA Tournament
May 22, 2008 NEW ORLEANS, La. -- The third-ranked Rice baseball team could not hold off a middle-inning rally by East Carolina and fell to the Pirates by the score of 4-3 in an elimination game at the 2008 Entergy Conference USA Championship Thursday afternoon at Greer Field at Turchin Stadium on the Tulane campus in New Orleans, La. The Owls have completed play in the double-elimination conference tournament, but certainly not the 2008 season. With a 42-13 record, one of the highest RPIs in the nation and with Reckling Park as its home venue, Rice expects to play and host NCAA postseason action. Regional play is slated to begin on May 30. Rice took the lead, its first of the tournament, in the top of the second inning. Aaron Luna drew a leadoff walk and Adam Zornes followed with a home run to left-center field. The Owls' junior catcher from St. Thomas High School blasted a 2-2 pitch for his team-leading eleventh home run of the season and a 2-0 advantage. The Blue & Gray then put another run on the board in the third. Doug Simmons started it off with a walk and Jared Gayhart punched a hit through the left side to put runners on the corners. Simmons scored a ground out to make it 3-0. East Carolina used the longball to get two runs back as well as start a rally to take the lead. In the fifth designated hitter Kyle Roller hit a one-out homer to straight-away center field for the team's first score. In the sixth C-USA Player of the Year Cory Kemp hit a leadoff homer to right-center. The Pirates' continued to apply the pressure in the sixth and proceeded to collect four more base hits in the inning to take the lead, 4-3. The Owls had men in scoring position in the fourth, fifth, eighth an ninth innings. The closest the Blue & Gray came was a runner just 90 feet away in the fifth and later ninth, but the team could not convert the opportunities to runs. In the team's last at bat of the ninth, Jimmy Comerota walked and moved to scoring position on a ground out to the right side. He aggressively took third base on a wild pitch, but he did so standing straight-up and while avoiding a tag thanks to a heady indirect route to the base.
The team's 2008 conference tournament hopes remained left at third base as the Pirates worked out of the jam to end the game. ECU's Josh Ruhlmann earned his second save of the season. He came in relief of T,J. Hose, who pitched well in a relief effort of his own to hold Rice to no runs or hits for 4.1 innings. The Owl pitching trio of Ryan Berry, Cole St.Clair and Bobby Bell held an ECU team that featured nine starters all hitting over .300 for the season, to four runs on eight hits. Rice is now 42-13 on the season. East Carolina moved to 40-18 to remain live in the tournament. ECU next meets the loser of the UAB-Houston game in an elimination contest on Friday at 3 pm. Sixteen Regional sites will be announced by the NCAA on Sunday, May 25. The 64-team NCAA Tournament field will be announced on Monday, May 26. The Owl players and coaches will assemble in the "R" Room atop the south end of Rice Stadium at 11 am to watch the official selection show starting at 11:30 am Central Time. |
