Stephen F. Austin
Arkansas - Pine Bluff
`Jacks Get Back On Track With Win Over UAPB
4/13/2011 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
April 13, 2011
PINE BLUFF, Ark. - The Stephen F. Austin baseball team pounded out a school-record seven doubles and Bryson Myles swiped a pair of bases to become the school's new single-season record holder on Tuesday in a 9-5 road win at Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
It was the second win of the year for SFA (23-11) over UAPB (7-25), including a 5-0 win in Nacogdoches on March 2. That day Jared West tossed a complete-game shutout, while on Tuesday it was freshman lefty Reid Landers who earned his first career win in his first collegiate start.
Landers struck out seven and walked none, allowing just a single unearned run in five innings against the Golden Lions. He scattered seven hits on the day, three of which were of the infield variety. He was staked with an early lead as well, with the Lumberjack offense putting up four runs in the first inning on its way to a 9-run, 15-hit afternoon.
Offensively, the `Jacks did not have a 1-2-3 inning and finished with seven doubles on the day, tying a school single-game record. Junior Jarid Scarafiotti continued his hot play at the plate to pace the attack, going 4-for-6 with a school-record three doubles and four RBI. The three two-baggers makes him the fourth Lumberjack ever to finish with three doubles, and the first since Garrett Smith had three on May 20, 2010 at Lamar.
Smith didn't finish with a bad day himself, reaching base in five of six plate appearances and scoring three runs, while going 3-for-4 with two doubles and two RBI himself. Meanwhile, Myles finished with just a single hit on the day, but took advantage of his time on the base paths, scoring three runs and taking second base twice, giving the national leader in swipes 31 for the year, breaking Kai Kirby's single-season school record of 30 that was set in 2008.
Myles tied the record in the first inning after leading off the game with a walk and moving to third on a steal and a throwing error before Smith brought him home with a line-drive single to right field to open up the scoring. Smith then followed suit and moved to third on another steal and throwing error and scored easily two batters later on the first of Scarfiotti's three doubles on the day. Two batters later Jordan Lewis dumped a two-run single into center field, quickly giving Landers a four-run cushion before he ever took the hill.
SFA left a pair of runners on base in both the second and third innings before finding a way to break through again in the fourth, using three straight doubles from Smith, Darren Crabtree and Scarafiotti to bring home two more scores.
The teams traded runs in the fifth with Smith hammering a run-scoring double into the left-center field gap in the top of the inning, and a passed ball letting UAPB's first run of the day come through in the bottom of the frame before Landers picked up his seventh punch out of the day and coaxed a fly out from Matt Pace to close out his day with a 7-1 SFA advantage.
The lead reached its peak at 9-1 on a bases-loaded double by Scarafiotti that scored two more in the top of the seventh. Meanwhile, after Brad Oates and Cory Ochs had each tossed scoreless relief frames in the sixth and seventh, the Lions finally put together their only significant rally of the day with a four-run eighth inning that trimmed the lead to 9-5.
But that was as close as they got as Landon Kozeny entered in the ninth and picked up a strikeout before using a double-play ball off the bat of Pace to end it.
The `Jacks get back to league play this weekend when they travel to Corpus Christi for a three-game series with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi beginning Friday at 3:00 p.m. All games in the series will be played at Chapman Field.
-SFA-
