CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 31, 2008 – Trailing 10-2 at the halfway point, James Madison fought back to outscore Charlotte 11-1 over the next two and a half innings and held on for a 13-12 win in an elimination game on Saturday afternoon in the Raleigh Regional of the 2008 NCAA Baseball Championship at Doak Field at Dail Park.
“I think that was a great college baseball game,” commented JMU head coach Spanky McFarland. “Obviously there were mistakes made by both teams, but you had two clubs that fought and clawed and didn’t want to go home. It was very entertaining and obviously both teams left it out on the field.”
Fourth-seeded JMU improved to 39-18 overall and picked up its seventh win in eight games. Charlotte, the #3 seed, finished its season at 43-16. The 49ers went 0-2 in the regional after entering the weekend having won 11 of 12. The NCAA tournament win for the Dukes was the first since 2002 in a 5-2 triumph over VCU in the Columbia, S.C. Regional.
With the victory, the Dukes advance to Sunday’s 1 p.m. contest against the #2 seed South Carolina. The Gamecocks fell to #1 N.C. State Saturday night by a final of 5-4.
The game featured 25 runs, 32 hits, 24 runners left on base (16 by Charlotte), 12 pitchers (a season-high seven by JMU), and lasted three hours and 57 minutes, the longest nine-inning game of the year for the Dukes.
JMU trailed 10-2 when it came to the plate in the fifth inning. However, similar to last Friday when the Dukes battled back from a 9-3 deficit against George Mason in the Colonial Athletic Association tournament, JMU charged back with two in the fifth and six runs in the sixth to tie the score.
Stated redshirt junior Brett Sellers (Greencastle, Pa./Greencastle-Antrim), “We’ve done it before. A lot of times in conference we had to come back. There was never a doubt that we could do it. It was just a matter of when we were going to do it. We just put it in our minds that it was what we were going to do. Both teams just hung on each other and played good baseball. We were fortunate to come out on top.”
Charlotte went back in front, 11-10, in the top of the seventh when Chris Taylor reached on a one-out single and scored on Aaron Bray's fly to left after advancing on a Brad McElroy single and an infield error..
However, JMU came right back to take its first lead, 13-11, in the bottom of the seventh. Freshman McKinnon Langston (Tallahassee, Fla./North Florida Christian) led off with a double and scored on sophomore Alex Foltz's (Mathias, W.Va./East Hardy) bases loaded infield grounder. The Dukes had a runner erased on a an unsuccessful squeeze bunt attempt, but finally took their first lead on an RBI double by Sellers with a second run scoring on a bobble by the rightfielder.
Charlotte pulled to within 13-12 without a hit in the eighth when O'Brien Taylor led off with a walk and advanced on a stolen base. He advanced on a flyout to right and scored on Rob Lyerly’s sacrifice fly to center.
The 49ers then put the potential tying run in scoring position in the ninth with a hit by pitch and a wild pitch. However, JMU redshirt freshman closer Trevor Knight (Charlottesville, Va./St. Anne’s-Belfield) recovered to record a pair of strikeouts for his sixth save of the season.
Freshman Turner Phelps (Roanoke, Va./Lord Botetourt), who started Friday’s game against N.C. State, earned the victory as the pitcher of record when the Dukes took the lead. He allowed a run on no hits in 1 1/3 innings. He allowed four walks as he was pitching on consecutive days for just the second time this season.
Redshirt senior Trevor Kaylid (Cary, N.C./Green Hope), pitching just minutes from his hometown, was the fifth JMU pitcher of the game and the first to finally quiet the 49ers, allowing an unearned run on three hits in two innings of work.
McFarland added, “When Trevor Kaylid put that zero up there – though it sounds silly because we were still down 10-2 at that point – but all of a sudden we’ve got four or five innings left and we get a couple of hits start falling and get a little momentum. We’re young so momentum is a big thing to us. We just needed one guy to stop them.”
Junior Sam Pierce was saddled with the loss for Charlotte after allowing all three of the JMU runs to take the lead in the seventh inning. He recorded just one out with a JMU hit, a walk, and a hit batter.
Four JMU batters had three hits in the game, led by Sellers going 3-for-4 with three RBIs, three runs, and a walk. He doubled and hit his 17th home run of the season in the game. Knight, sophomore Matt Browning (Mystic, Conn./Fitch), and Langston each went 3-for-5 in the ballgame with Browning collecting his third triple of the season. Foltz doubled, drove in three runs, walked, and scored twice.
Chris Taylor was 3-for-4 with two walks, two runs, and one RBI for the 49ers. Five other players had two hits each. Aaron Bray hit a two-run home run for Charlotte while O’Brien Taylor hit a home run, drove in two, walked twice, and scored four runs.
After scoring once in the third, Charlotte appeared to break the game open with four runs in the fourth to raise its lead to 5-0. The 49ers got a leadoff home run to left field by Bray. O'Brien Taylor added a two-run homer to left and Shaylor plated the final run of the inning with a bases-loaded single off the third JMU pitcher of the frame.
JMU got to within 5-2 in the fourth when Sellers led off with a home run to left and Langston singled in Browning, who had tripled to center field with two outs.
The 49ers scored five times in the fifth, with all the damage after two were out, to raise their lead to 10-2. Sophomore Kyle Hoffman (Reading, Pa./Twin Valley) retired the first two batters on a slower grounder and a strikeout, but the next seven Charlotte hitters reached base, six by hits and another with a hit by a pitch. Shayne Moody had an RBI single, a second run scored on a wild pitch, Rob Lyerly had an RBI double and Chris Taylor and Brad McElroy added run-scoring singles.
JMU scored twice in the fifth when freshman shortstop David Herbek (Haymarket, Va./Battlefield) led off with a bunt single, Sellers reached on a two-out walk and redshirt sophomore first baseman Steven Caseres (New City, N.Y./St. Joseph Regional) delivered a double into the right-field corner.
JMU tied the score 10-10 with six runs in the sixth. Foltz drove in the first two with a bases-loaded double inside the first base bag, senior second baseman Joe Lake (Elkridge, Md./Long Reach) pulled the Dukes to within 10-7 with a sacrifice fly, Sellers had an RBI single, and Knight tied the score with a two-run double.
Notes: The double by Caseres was his 20th of the season, making him the first player in JMU history with 20 doubles and 20 home runs in one season... Caseres also tied Kellen Kulbacki’s single season record for extra base hits with 43... he became the fifth player in JMU history to reach 70 RBIs in a season and broke a four-way tie for sixth in season doubles at JMU... Sellers had seven total bases in the game to jump from fifth to second in season total bases all-time with 165, Caseres ranks second with 163... Sellers recorded his 13th three-hit game and 29th multiple-hit game of the season while jumping into a tie for fourth in season hits (90), a tie for 10th in season doubles (18), and a tie for seventh in season homers (17)... Knight’s sixth save pushes him into a four-way tie for third at JMU in season saves... with the victory, JMU broke a 4-4 tie in the all-time series against Charlotte... the Dukes were swept by the 49ers last year in a three-game series... JMU has not had two wins in one NCAA Tournament since reaching the College World Series in 1983... the Dukes are 8-13 all-time in NCAA play... Charlotte lost for just the fourth time in May... the 49ers fell to 19-3 on the season when scoring 10 or more runs and are 0-10 when allowing 10 runs... JMU, meanwhile, is now 14-3 when scoring 10 and 2-7 when allowing 10... the Dukes were playing their first elimination game of the season, having clinched a CAA tournament berth early in the year and running through the CAA tournament 4-0.
Courtesy: JMUSports.com
