April 24, 2004
Final Stats
Edinburg, Texas - Texas-Pan American (19-28) won its third straight game with a 6-3 win over Dallas Baptist (36-12). The Broncs close out the home portion of the 2004 season against Southeastern Louisiana on May7-9.
Texas-Pan American struck in its first at-bat. With two outs, Marco Garza singled through the left side. Matt Eichel then sent a pitch bouncing off the top of the left field wall for a two run home run. The Patriots would fire back in the top of the second. With one out, Ned Yost struck out but the pitch sailed past the catcher allowing Yost to reach first. Jimmy Thoma singled through the left side to move Yost to second. Daniel Magness then lined a double down the right field line to score Yost and put Thoma at third. A single to right field by Nate Thompson drove in Thoma to tie the game at 2.
In the third inning, Garza singled through the right side and moved to second when Eichel was hit by a pitch. A sacrifice bunt by Matt Sisk moved Garza to third and Eichel to second. Ben DiOrio then lifted a sacrifice fly to right field that scored Garza to give the Broncs the lead for good.
In the fifth inning, the Broncs took advantage of two errors. Aaron Flowers open the inning with a walk and moved to second on a single from Garza. A sacrifice bunt moved Flowers to third and Garza to second. Sisk walked to load the bases for DiOrio, whose grounder to the pitcher was misplayed. That error scored Flowers and kept the bases loaded. Ricky Broyles hit a hard grounder to third. The third baseman tagged the bag forcing Sisk out but his throw to first sailed into the UTPA dugout allowing Garza to score. DBU scored one run in the sixth and the Broncs got that back in the seventh.
In the ninth inning, the Patriots threatened as Thompson singled and Drew Noss walked to put two on with no outs. Broyles came in from third to pitch and got Cody Montgomery to hit into a double play. He then struck out Ryan Olivo looking to end the game.
For UTPA, Garza was 3-for-3 and scored four runs, Eichel was 1-for-2, scored a run and drove in two runs and Louie Alamia had a single to extend his reaching base safely streak to 56 games. John Lopez gave up six hits, three runs and struck out two batters in six innings to move to 1-1. Broyles struck out one batter in one inning for his eighth save of the season. That breaks the school record of 7 by Scott Fowler in 2001.
For Dallas Baptist, Thoma was 3-for-3 and Olivo was 2-for-5. Tyler Rowland gave up six hits, five runs and struck out one in four innings to fall to 2-1.
"Pitching and defense were the keys for us today," Said head coach Willie Gawlik. "John pitched a great game for us with just three walks in six innings. He gave up just one run and three hits in the last four innings he pitched. Aaron Guerra did a fine job out of the bull pen for us. Once again, Ricky was put in a tough situation and came through for us. We were able to get the bunts down with runners in scoring position which helped us out."
