LC wins opener in NCAA baseball tournament

Chris Humphreys
Published: May 14, 2008

DANVILLE — Lynchburg College’s offense exploded for five runs in the top of the ninth on a two-run homer by Jon Crews (Heritage) and a three-run blast by Ryan Litz (Jefferson Forest) to leave no doubt that Joe Devlin’s stellar pitching performance would stand up in the Hornets’ 9-1 win over Piedmont College in the first round of the NCAA South Region baseball tournament.
With the win, LC set a new school record for victories (31) in a season.
“Joey D pitched one heck of a ball game, and any time he got in a jam he worked out of it and we got some keys hits at the right time,” LC coach Percy Abell said. “We hadn’t swung the bats extremely well the last couple of weeks of the regular season and we needed that.”
Lynchburg (31-11) plays Christopher Newport at 7 p.m., tonight. CNU defeated Johns Hopkins 8-5 in 10 innings earlier in the day.
“I had a pretty good feeling it was gone and I checked the left fielder and he wasn’t moving,” Crews said. “This was big game for coach Abell. I know 31 sets the school record and hopefully we can keep it up.”
Crews was 4-for-4 with a two singles, a double, a home run and three RBIs.
Devlin remained perfect on the season, running his record to 9-0 with a complete-game effort. He allowed one earned run, on eight hits, three walks and four strikeouts.
“I was just trying to throw strikes, keep the ball low and get groundballs,” said Devlin.
No groundball was more important than the one LC turned into a double play in the bottom of the fifth when the Lions (33-13) had the bases loaded with one out.
All but one of the Hornets had at least one hit as LC outhit Piedmont 15-8.
Cameron Grant (Heritage) got the Hornets off to a fast start by blistering a shot down the right field line to lead off the game. Kyle Bradly (William Campbell) plated Grant two pitches latter by mashing a ball up the middle.
“Seeing Cameron get a double like that gave me all the confidence in the world,” Bradley said. “I just put the ball in play and good things happened.”
LC added two more runs in the fifth on RBI singles by Bradley and Crews. They tacked on one more run in the eighth off of Litz’s RBI single.
Bradley was 3-for-5 with two RBIs. Litz was 3-for-4 with four RBIs, two runs, a homer and a double.
“We broke the school record today and it was important for these guys to break it,” Abell said