Catawba wins 2006 Food Lion SAC Baseball Tournament title
Catawba 9, Mars Hill 2 Box Score
GREENEVILLE, TN -- Top-seeded Catawba claimed its spot in the NCAA
Regional Tournament by posting a 9-2 win over fourth-seeded Mars
Hill in the finals of the 2006 Food Lion South Atlantic Conference
Baseball Tournament on Sunday afternoon at Pioneer Park.
Eighth-ranked Catawba, which improves to 44-11, wins its third Food
Lion SAC Tournament Championship and its second title in three
years. Mars Hill concludes its season with a 32-27 mark.
Jimbo Davis (Salisbury, NC) paced Catawba's offense, going 2-for-4 with three RBI. Matt Smith (Brown Summitt, NC) recorded the win, allowing no runs on four hits and two walks over six innings. He struck out six.
Six different players posted one hit each for Mars Hill. Clarke Rollins (Mechanicsville, MD) and David DeSilva (Charlotte, NC) had one RBI apiece. Nick Tracy (Herndon, VA) took the loss for the Lions, surrendering six earned runs on nine hits and four walks over four innings. He struck out two.
After plating one run in the top of the first inning on an RBI grounder by Mark Smith (Brown Summitt, NC), the Indians exploded for a five-run second to take a 6-0 lead. Noah Johnson (Huntersville, NC) drove in Chad Baker (Jamestown, NC) with an RBI single to right. The next two runs came in via bases-loaded walks. Aaron Rimer (Salisbury, NC) generated the other pair of runs in the stanza, slapping a two-run single to right, which scored Davis and Mark Smith.
The fifth inning saw the Indians add three more runs to their tally, extending the Catawba lead to 9-0. Davis drove in two runs with a double down the left field line. He then came home from second base when Matt Smith hit a sacrifice fly to center.
Mars Hill got on the scoreboard in the bottom of the seventh when Rollins grounded to second, scoring John Quail (Boonsboro, MD). The Lions scored their second run in the bottom of the ninth, as Jason Yelton (Burnsville, NC) plated a run when DeSilva's grounder to the shortstop was misplayed.