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AGGIES END WILDCATS STREAK ON LIVE TV
Phelps earns his
fourth save of the season April 8, 2007
GREENSBORO, – For five innings it looked like a lock that the North Carolina A&T baseball team would end Bethune-Cookman’s 20-game MEAC winning streak on Easter Sunday.
What looked like a sure thing, however, turned into horrid anxiety before Aggies closer Ron Phelps sealed the game with quality late-inning pitching to give the Aggies a 14-11 win over the Wildcats at War Memorial Stadium in front of a nationally-televised audience on ESPNU.
Joe McIntyre improved his batting average by 32 points on Sunday by going 5-for-5 with four RBI and two runs scored. In only his seventh start of the season, Joe Wade recorded three hits, scored twice and had an RBI. The Aggies improved to 2-0 on ESPNU with wins over Delaware State and the Wildcats. On the season, the Aggies are 10-21 overall and 4-5 in the MEAC. Bethune-Cookman dropped to 15-22 overall and 5-1 in the MEAC. The loss was their first in the conference since losing to Delaware State on April 24, 2005.
N.C. A&T had lost six straight to the Wildcats, including a 9-5 defeat at last season’s MEAC Baseball Tournament. But on Sunday, the Aggies had a 10-run lead, 13-3, by the fifth inning. The Wildcats rallied to cut the Aggies lead to 13-8.
In the eighth, the Wildcats moved even closer to continuing their streak. Jose Ortiz was hit a Jody Calloway pitch to start the inning. Calloway then walked Luis Gonzalez and Angel Mercado to load the bases. Calloway was able to record the first out of the inning by striking out Wildcats power hitter Angel Negron.
Chris Henault was also walked Calloway, forcing in a Wildcats run to make it 13-9. Alejandro Jimenez took a 2-1 Calloway offering and lined into center field to score two more Bethune-Cookman runs as Gonzalez and Mercado scored to move the Aggies two within two runs at 13-11.
Aggies coach Keith Shumate then turned to his save leader from 2006, Ron Phelps. Phelps opened his appearance by getting pinch-hitter Chris Brown to hit into a fielder’s choice that forced out Jimenez at second. When Justin Hoyte flied out to left, Phelps had the Aggies out of the inning.
Mishaps by Wildcats reliever Francisco Gonez would help the Aggies in their effort to give Phelps more of a lead to work with. Jaron Neal led off the Aggies half of the eighth with a base hit. James Howard pinch ran for Neal. Nick Mayo couldn’t advance Howard as he struck out, but Howard did advance thanks to a balk by Gomez. Wildcat mistakes continued to hurt Bethune-Cookman. Phillip Brewington reached on error, putting runners at third and first.
Gomez’s second balk of the inning gave the Aggies the insurance they needed as Howard scored on the balk. Phelps handled things from there. He got the first two Wildcat batters out before walking Luis Gonzalez. After throwing a wild pitch to advance Gonzalez to second, Phelps ended the game by getting Mercado to groundout.
Phelps earned his fourth save of the season, while John Primus improved to 2-3 on the season with the win. Dustin Blackwell took the loss as he only pitched 1.1 innings because the Aggies were able to figure him out early. In fact, the Aggies compiled 13 hits over the first five innings of the game. The Aggies scoring onslaught over the first five innings was capped off by monstrous home run off the bat of C.J. Beatty who took a Phil Enright pitch over the right field wall and parked it onto the War Memorial parking lot. Beatty, who leads the team in home runs, had two hits and three RBI. The Aggies are back in action Tuesday at 3 p.m., when they host High Point at War Memorial Stadium.
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