Feb. 27, 2011
ATLANTA – No. 23 St. John’s belted two home runs and collected 12 hits off of four pitchers to knock off the 21st-ranked Georgia Tech baseball team, 13-3, Sunday afternoon at Russ Chandler Stadium.
With the loss, the Yellow Jackets fall to 5-3 on the season and are denied a series sweep for the second straight weekend. St. John’s ends a three-game losing streak and improves to 3-3.
Joe Panik and Matt Wessinger led St. John’s at the plate with three hits a piece, combining to drive in seven of the team’s 13 runs. Both players belted their first home runs of the season on Sunday as a part of five extra base hits by the Red Storm.
“We knew they [St. John’s] were a good hitting team,” head coach Danny Hall said. “They got a bunch of hits last weekend, so today was their day.
“We have been in a position two Sundays in a row at home to sweep and haven’t been able to do it. We just need to play better, pitch better, and probably need to have more of a killer instinct once we win those first two games.”
Georgia Tech sophomore Buck Farmer (0-1) picked up the loss after lasting four innings, allowing seven runs (four earned) on five hits.
Farmer ran into some trouble early in the first inning, issuing four walks, including one with bases loaded to give St. John’s its first run of the series.
“I told the team after the game, that when you are the starting pitcher, and you shut somebody out two days in a row, you cannot go out there and walk four guys and walk in a run in the first inning and expect to survive,” added Hall. “Buck [Farmer] just had a hard time locating his fastball and they hit a couple of home runs off of him to get us behind the 8-ball.”
The Red Storm made it 5-0 with a pair home runs run by Panik and Wessinger in the third inning.
Tech got on board in the bottom half of the frame with a RBI single to right field by junior Matt Skole, but St. John’s scored eight unanswered runs over the next five innings to push the lead to 13-1.
The Jackets made three big defensive miscues in the game, leading to eight unearned runs. The three errors tied for a season-high.
Skole was 2-for-4 with two RBI to lead Tech on the afternoon. He concluded the weekend series going 9-for-14 (.643) with seven RBI. His RBI double in the eighth inning drove in one of two late runs added by the Jackets.
St. John’s starter Brendan Lobban (1-0) scattered six hits and three runs over 7. 2 innings for his first win of the season. He recorded five strikeouts and issued three walks.
The Jackets will face Georgia State in midweek action on Wednesday, March 2. The two teams will face off at 4 p.m. at Russ Chandler Stadium.
