Eagles Sweep Johnson in Weekend Series

David Finney

Waleska, GA - It was a nice weekend for baseball and the Eagles made the most of it taking three games against Johnson University. The Royals came in for a single game on Saturday and the doubleheader day on Sunday. Game one went to the Eagles in a 5-2 victory and they were looking to finish out the series on Sunday with two more wins. Game two of the series would go to the Eagles in a close game, 4-2, and the third game would see the Eagles expand on their run total finishing off the Royals 13-2.

Game One, 4-2 Win

Ethan Foley would get the start in game one and he was looking to add more strikeouts to his impressive totals for the season. He would end up with 6 strikeouts on the day and he only had 3 hits against him in seven innings of work and only gave up one run. Six of his seven innings were shutout baseball. The young left-hander, Hunter Paulsen, would come in to relieve Foley in the eighth inning and he would have a couple of strikeouts and only give up two hits.  There were some minor issues that Paulsen had to pitch out of, but he did so and picked up the save. Foley was the winning pitcher for the game and that was his third win of the season.

The Eagles got most of their offense in the first inning from runs by Jacob Profit, Tucker Zdunich, and Jarrett Burney. Nick Sanders was able to single to left knocking in Zdunich and Burney. The only other run for the Eagles happened in the second inning when Lance Dockery stole third base and the throw got past the third baseman. The overthrow allowed Dockery to make it home giving the Eagles an early 4-0 lead. The Royals eventually scored in the sixth and ninth inning, but the Eagles hung on to take the close win, 4-2.

Jacob Profit and Nick Sanders both went 2 for 4 in the game to lead the Eagles. Alex Coulter went 1 for 2 and his hit was a double. The hits and runs were hard to come by in this game as both starting pitchers were doing great on the mound. The Eagles did enough early to pick up the win in game two of the series.

Game Two, 13-2 Win

Game two would see the Eagles get loose in a couple of innings and put up some large run totals. They were able to score in every inning of this seven-inning final game. The second and third inning is where they would do their most damage scoring 4 runs in each. Alex Coulter and Nick Sanders scored on a single to center field by Jarrett Burney. Later in the inning, the bases were loaded and Zdunich was hit by a pitch. This brought in Cedric Cullars, Shortly after, Jacob Profit was able to score on a ground out to second by Xavier Arnette. 

In the third inning, Nick Sanders, Cedric Cullars, Dawson Johns, and Jacob Proft all would score. Cullars would single to get in Sanders, Johns hit a double to bring in Cullars, and Zdunich singled to right field to bring in Johns and Profit.  The Eagles were manufacturing runs the entire game and it paid off. The wind was blowing hard all day and most of the time it was headed straight in for home plate. There was no way someone was going to hit one out while the wind was blowing so the Eagles made things happen with timely hits and moving the base runners.  After picking up a few runs in the other innings, the Eagles would run away with the game for a blowout victory, 13-2.

Andrew Herbert would get the start in game three and he did a great job on the mound for the Eagles. In his four innings of work, he would have 3 strikeouts and only give up five hits and zero runs. The remaining innings would go to the bullpen with Blake Rogers, Will Cassel, and Jaily Parades. Each would get one inning and Rogers and Parades would each get three strikeouts in their innings. Parades would not give up a run. Rogers and Cassel had one run each against them. 

This was a good week for the Eagles as their record would move to 18-12 overall and 8-4 in the conference. They have a five-game winning streak going and they will look to extend that some more when they take on Middle Georgia on Tuesday and then another conference weekend series with Bluefield (one game Friday, two games Sunday).