DCBB Sweeps Franklin
Zachary Bires (Defiance, OH)
The Defiance College Baseball team is feeling pretty confident after the weekend sweep against Franklin. The Jackets were able to improve their conference record to 6-5, and keep themselves in the race for making the conference tournament.
The Jackets started off the weekend winning Saturday’s game 8-0. The highlight of this game was by Junior pitcher Dave Blanch who was able to toss a 2 hit shutout. Blanch had a no hitter until the 5th inning, and was able to strikeout 4 hitters. Blanch was later named HCAC pitcher of the week after this performance, improving his record to 3-1. Gentile, Levengood, Harrington, and Weber all had multi hit games for the Jackets, while Levengood and Harrington both had 2 RBI’s to add to the multi hit game.
Game 2 of the series started off with the Jackets taking the lead in the second, and adding on 2 more by the 4th, making it 4-0. The Jackets were not able to score again, but the Grizzlies were able to score 2 in the 8th, but were held to 1 in the 9th, meaning the Jackets were able to pull out the 4-3 win. Nick Peters received the win, tossing 7.1 innings and striking out 4, while only giving up 2 earned runs. Chris Douglas then came in and shut the Grizzlies down for the save. Gentile, Weber, Gilliland, and Reed all scored runs for the Jackets.
The Jackets final game of the series did not start off well. They did were down 9 to 1 in the bottom of the 5th before putting together their comeback. They scored 5 in the 5th, 7 in the 6th and added on 5 more in the 8th as insurance. Freshman Bryce Alabata was the winning pitcher, improving his record to 1-0, tossing 3.1 innings and striking out 6 batters. Kohlhofer, Levengood, Harrington, DeVoe, and Gilliland all had multi hit games for the Jackets. Gilliland was also able to add on 4 RBI’s to his day.
Senior Ryan Kohlhofer was able to break the record for Defiance College for assists in a year in game 3. After the series, Kohlhofer felt pretty good about the sweep saying, “The sweep felt great. Especially after only taking one game from Transylvania. Sweeping Franklin was a huge momentum swing for the team to get us back on track to get into the conference tournament.”
The Jackets continue their season Wednesday at home against Bluffton, and travel to Earlham to play one game on Friday and two games on Saturday. As always, Go Jackets!
