Catawba Drills Mount Olive, Stays Alive in NCAA Baseball Championship

GREENWOOD, S.C. -- Catawba stayed alive at the 2014 NCAA Division II Southeast Region Baseball Tournament with a 16-4 thumping of second-seeded Mount Olive in an elimination game on Friday afternoon. The Catawba Indians up their record to 34-19 and will face either Georgia College or Columbus State in another win or go home game on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. The Trojans, ranked #3 in NCAA II, end their season at 40-13.

Blake Houston (Mt. Ulla, NC/S. Rowan HS) led the hit parade for the Indians, going 4-for-6 and scoring a pair of runs. Paul Kronenfeld (Greensboro, NC/Woodberry Forest HS/Georgia Tech) reached base all six times he came to the plate and scored five runs. He doubled twice, singled and walked three times.

The Indians battered six Mount Olive pitchers for a total of 17 hits and also benefitted from eight walks and three Trojan errors. Six Indians had multi-hit games as Keaton Hawks (Lexington, NC/E, Davidson HS), Ethan Satterfield (Madison, NC/McMichael HS), T.J. Wharton (Lutz, FL/Bishop McLaughlin HS/Guilford Tech), and Cameron Beard (Conover, NC/Bunker Hill HS) all had two hits..

Catawba matched its hit total of its opener in the first inning on Friday, scoring four times on three hits. Clutch two-out RBI singles in the fourth by Hawks and Satterfield broke a 4-4 tie and after John Tuttle (Kannapolis, NC/A.L. Brown HS) worked out of a jam in the fifth, Catawba poured on the runs.

An earned run in the fifth was followed by two runs in the sixth on four walks and a strikeout-wild pitch. Wharton doubled home two more runs in the seventh, as did Kronenfeld in the eighth. Wharton and Satterfield each plated three runs for Catawba.

Tuttle (8-2) went five innings and scattered seven hits with two walks and two strikeouts. He gave up the four runs, three of which were earned. Shaefer Shepard (Boca Raton, FL/Boca Raton HS/Francis Marion) threw three hitless innings of relief and Sean Grant (Statesville, NC/W. Iredell HS) tossed a scoreless ninth to cap the win.

Bradon Reitano had two hits for Mount Olive and scored twice. The Trojans had fought back from an early 4-1 deficit to tie the game with a three-run third. Trailing by two in the fifth, the first two Trojan runners reached base. A failed sacrifice and a double play ball ended the threat and Shepard closed the door after that.

- Catawba media relations