Baseball: Yurish Shuts Down UC in Game One
May 13, 2006 03:18 PM | General
May 13, 2006
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| Matt Yurish |
CINCINNATI – West Virginia was in need of a quality pitching performance and it got it from surprise starter Matt Yurish Saturday in the first game of an afternoon doubleheader against Cincinnati at UC Baseball Stadium.
The lefthander pitched eight strong innings to lift the Mountaineers to a 9-1 victory. Yurish, making his first Big East start of the year, limited the Bearcats to just one earned run on four hits, striking out eight and walking four.
“I was a little surprised that I got the start but I just took the ball and tried to go out there and do a good job,” Yurish said. “I was actually going to pitch last night when the game got canceled and it just carried over to today.”
After putting the first two runners on base to start the game, Yurish got No. 3 hitter Logan Parker to ground into a 4-6-3 double play. Designated hitter Jack Nelson followed with a single up the middle to score Mark Muscenti, but the sophomore avoided further damage by getting Brian Szarmach to look at strike three.
“We got a nice double play from Tyler Kuhn that kind of kept us out of a big inning,” Yurish said. “They still scored a run but they didn’t get any more after that.”
The Mountaineers tied the game in the second on a David Carpenter solo blast off the right field scoreboard, his sixth of the year, and got four more in the third on a pair of RBI hits by Kyle Matuszek and Casey Bowling, who slugged his seventh home run of the season over the left field fence.
West Virginia plated single runs in the fourth and fifth, and got two more in the sixth off UC starter Steve Blevins, who gave up nine earned runs on 14 hits to fall to 8-4.
“It’s good pitching with a big lead because you know you can shove your fastball in there and let them hit it,” Yurish said.
After two outs in the fifth, Yurish walked Muscenti and hit Josh Harrison but he was able to strike out Parker. In the sixth, Yurish once again had runners on first and second with two outs but was able to get Jon DeLuca to fly out to second.
“My mindset now is to throw strikes and if they hit the ball and score runs so be it. We just don’t want to let them have free passes,” Yurish said.
Yurish finally gave way to Kevin Korzun in the ninth, who pitched a scoreless inning after the leadoff batter got on base on a ground ball Jenkins couldn’t come up with at third.
“I was throwing a two-seam fastball pretty well, getting some ground balls, pop ups and missing some bats,” Yurish said. “I found my breaking ball as the game went on and I threw my changeup probably no more than 10 times, but it was effective every time I threw it.”
Yurish, a Hedgesville, W.Va., resident, who improved to 5-2 on the season, believes today’s outing was his best pitching performance of the year, topping a 7-inning no-hit effort against Coppin State earlier in the season.
“With the team we played and it being a game that we really needed to have to try and get to the tournament, it was probably a better performance,” Yurish said.
West Virginia (31-18, 11-11) got three hits each from Doug Nelms and Stan Posluszny, while Jenkins, Matuszek and Carpenter had a pair of hits. Posluszny, Matuszek, Bowling and Carpenter each drove in two runs. The Mountaineers finished the game with 15 hits.
Cincinnati (30-20, 11-11) managed only four singles.
Game two follows at 3:30 pm.
