BALTIMORE, Md. – The Ursinus College baseball team succumbed to Johns Hopkins' stellar pitching as the Blue Jays grabbed a sweep of Saturday's Centennial Conference doubleheader.
The hosts overcame an early 2-0 deficit to post an 11-2 victory in the opener and sealed the sweep with a 5-2 victory in the nightcap.
Tom Snipes hit his first career home run for the Bears (4-7, 4-6).
Game 1
The Bears had a tall order in front of them in the opener, going against Hopkins ace Peter Schaefer. The righty entered with a 1.79 ERA, good for 5th in the conference, and 34 strikeouts over 25 innings of work.
Will Peiffer squared him up right away, however, driving a leadoff double into the gap in left-center. A grounder to second by Eric Gross moved Peiffer to third with only one out, but Schaefer struck out the next two hitters to escape unscathed.
Nick DeFeo pulled a Houdini of his own in the bottom of the opening frame, getting out of a bases-loaded jam with only one out by striking out Austin Sacks and getting James Ingram on a flyout to right.
Ursinus drew first blood in the top of the third, when Tom Jacobs led off with a double and took third on Dan Icaza's bunt single. Icaza stole second, and a wild pitch allowed Jacobs to come home with the game's first run. Peiffer then lofted a sacrifice fly to score Icaza.
DeFeo held the Blue Jays off the board until a two-out RBI single in the fourth, and the home side blew the game open in the fifth. An error permitted the leadoff man to reach base and started a stretch of five straight Hopkins batters to reach base. Austin Sacks' two-run double gave the Blue Jays the lead for good, and by the time the dust settled they had put up a five-run frame. Hopkins added single runs in the sixth and seventh and tacked on three more in the eighth.
Jacobs had half of the Bears' four hits in the opener, going 2-for-3 with a run scored.
Schaefer was dominant, striking out 12 over eight innings. Jared DeFaria (3-for-4, three runs, two RBI) and Mark Lopez (3-for-4, 3 RBI) led the Blue Jays' offense.
AJ Alvero was terrific in his Bears debut, entering with the bases loaded and no outs in the eighth and retiring the next three batters without allowing a run.
Game 2
Unlike the opener, Hopkins got the jump on the Bears quickly in Game 2. DeFaria's 2-run double and an RBI single by Sacks quickly made it 3-0 in the first, and the Blue Jays picked up single runs in the second and third to go up 5-0.
That was all that Nolan Graber allowed the hosts to score, but it proved too much. Colby Chan got the Bears on the board in the fifth with an RBI single, and Snipes hit his first round-tripper in the sixth, but no other runs materialized.
Jerry Scavone was 3-for-3 and scored a run in the nightcap, while Chan finished 2-for-4.
Graber settled down impressively to work a complete game, allowing eight hits over eight innings and striking out six. He mowed down the side in the bottom of the sixth.
DeFaria was the catalyst again for Hopkins, going 2-for-3 with a homer, a double, three RBI, and two runs scored.