Irish Outslug WVU
May 24, 2006 11:39 PM | General
May 24, 2006
BOX SCORE
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| Stan Posluszny |
CLEARWATER, Fla. – If West Virginia is going to win the Big East tournament it is going to have to do it the hard way. Mountaineer starting pitcher Matt Yurish couldn’t get out of the second inning as No. 18 Notre Dame belted West Virginia 12-4 Wednesday night at Bright House Networks Field.
Irish starting pitcher Jeff Samardzjia wasn’t perfect either, but he didn’t have to be tonight. The hard-throwing right hander pitched Notre Dame into the ninth, giving up four runs on nine hits with six strike outs. He improves to 8-2 and lifts Notre Dame into Friday’s match up against the winner of tomorrow night’s West Virginia-St. John’s elimination game at 7 pm.
The Red Storm stayed alive by beating South Florida 6-4 earlier this afternoon.
The Irish (43-14-1) jumped all over the Mountaineers’ Yurish, who was throwing on four days rest. After Jeremy Barnes singled in Craig Cooper, who led off with a single to right, Matt Bransfield clubbed a Yurish offering over the right field fence to give Notre Dame a 3-0 lead in the first.
West Virginia (36-21) countered with a two-run home run from Stan Posluszny in the bottom of the first, but Notre Dame tacked on three more in the second. One run came on a towering home run over the second fence in right from designated hitter Ross Brezovsky, and two more resulted from Jeremy Barnes' single up the middle to give Notre Dame a 6-2 lead and knock Yurish out of the game.
The score remained that way until the sixth when West Virginia got things going with one out. Kyle Matuszek singled up the middle and advanced to third on Casey Bowling’s double to right center.
The Mountaineers got a pair of runs when Samardzjia couldn’t handle David Carpenter’s slow roller and threw the ball past Irish catcher Sean Gaston that plated Matuszek and Bowling. Carpenter wound up at second on the play and advanced to third when Samardzjia was called for a balk.
West Virginia could have cut Notre Dame’s lead to 6-5, but the Irish came up with the defensive play of the game on Michael Burger’s fly out to medium right field. Notre Dame right fielder Cody Rizzo fired a strike to Gaston at the plate, who met Carpenter a couple of steps up the line to record the third out of the inning.
WVU reliever Levi Maxwell, who pitched four scoreless innings in relief of Yurish, ran into trouble in the seventh after getting the first two Irish batters out. Maxwell hit both Gaston and Alex Nettey before giving up an RBI single to Rizzo.
West Virginia coach Greg Van Zant went to his bullpen for Dan Leatherman, who got what should have been an inning ending pop up to the left side of the infield. But Justin Jenkins couldn’t handle Craig Cooper’s fly ball and with the runners moving with two outs, both Brezovsky and Rizzo scored on the error.
Kevin Korzun allowed two more Notre Dame runs in the eighth.
Yurish takes the loss and drops to 6-3.
Bowling had two more hits for West Virginia and shows four hits for the tournament. Gaston went 3 for 4 to lead Notre Dame.
Posluszny's home run was the 33rd of his career, moving him into second place behind Tim McCabe's school-record 35 home runs. Posluszny owns the school record with 174 RBI.
Notre Dame has now won five straight against the Mountaineers in Big East tournament play.
