Baseball: Series Sweep
April 13, 2003 07:29 PM | General
April 13, 2003
 |
||
| Rine |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Jarod Rine tied a school record shared by 18 others with 5 hits and Jason DiAngelo matched a career high with 11 strike outs to help West Virginia to a 10-5 victory over Connecticut Sunday afternoon and a series sweep of the Huskies.
Paired with West Virginia’s doubleheader sweep of Connecticut Saturday, WVU, now 6-2 in league play, put itself right into the thick of the Big East race.
West Virginia jumps into third place in the league standings ahead of Rutgers, Connecticut and Boston College.
Notre Dame, idle this week in Big East play, is atop the conference standings with a 7-1 record. Virginia Tech, which took two out of three against Boston College, is in second –place with an 8-2 conference mark.
St. John’s is a half-game behind the Mountaineers in fourth place with a 7-3 record after a three-game sweep of Georgetown.
Rine was the catalyst Sunday for the Mountaineers, leading off the game with a home run and finishing 5 for 5 with 3 runs and 3 RBI.
Lee Fritz also continued his torrid hitting going 2 for 4 to increase his league-leading batting average to .460.
“We have guys one through nine who can hit the ball,” said Rine.
Leading 1-0, West Virginia tacked on two more runs in the bottom of the second when catcher Travis D’Amico’s groundout scored Grant Psomas, and Rine followed with a single to knock in Derek Cisar.
The Mountaineers added two more in the bottom of the fourth on Kurtis Clinton’s two-run single to left. Clinton finished the game 2 for 3 with 2 RBI.
Connecticut got an unearned run in the top of the fifth to close WVU’s lead to 5-1, but the Mountaineers broke the game open in the bottom of the fifth after a two-run single by Eric Grimm plated Rine and Cisar.
Jake Serfass slugged a two-run homer to right in the bottom of the sixth for two of West Virginia’s three runs that inning.
That gave Jason DiAngelo more than enough room to improve to 5-2 on the year. DiAngelo cruised through eight innings before running into some trouble in the ninth. He eventually gave way to Ryan Lipscomb, who recorded the final out to get his second save of the year.
“Overall our performance was great,” said DiAngelo. “I felt pretty good today. I felt my slider was pretty dominant today and I had a lot of movement on my fastball.”
DiAngelo matched his career high of 11 strike outs to go with just 3 walks. Two of DiAngelo’s five runs allowed were earned.
Connecticut starter Peter Soteropoulos was touched up for 7 earned runs on 11 hits through 4.2 innings to take the loss. He drops to 2-2.
West Virginia is now 11 games over .500 with a 22-11 overall record.
“We’ve got three starters throwing pretty well right now,” said DiAngelo. “We’ve just got to stay healthy and throw the ball in the strike zone and we’ll be fine.”
Connecticut drops to 16-14.
West Virginia resumes conference play Thursday at Hawley Field with a doubleheader against Virginia Tech. The Hokies are 22-9 overall.
