LEXINGTON, SC—Winthrop's baseball team pulled off its second ninth inning walk-off win of the day to defeat No. 3 seed Presbyterian College 4-3 on Saturday night in the Big South Conference Baseball Championship Tournament at the Lexington County Baseball Stadium.
The win sets up a rematch against the Blue Hose at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday with the winner advancing to the 3:00 p.m. championship game with Radford.
Trailing 3-1 heading into its final at bat, Winthrop rallied for the win as it took advantage of two errors by PC shortstop Cletis Avery.
Jake Sullivan reached on a throwing error by Avery and
Matthew Mulkey, the hero in Winthrop's 14-13 win over High Point earlier in the day, followed with a sharp single to left.
Grant English then sacrificed both runners to third and second and
Anthony Paulsen was issued an intentional walk to load the bases.
Mitch Spires then dropped a soft liner over the shortstop's head to score Sullivan.
Hunter Lipscomb tied the game with a sacrifice fly to deep right to score Mulkey and Paulsen moved to third. That brought
Babe Thomas to the plate whose grounder to Avery was mishandled allowing Paulsen to score the winning run.
With the win Winthrop improves to 34-24 while PC drops to 31-28.
Presbyterian scored twice in the top of the fourth off Eagle starter
Jason Crumley. Brett Auckland drew a leadoff walk and moved to third on a double to right center field by T.J. Richardson. Auckland scored the first run on an infield groundout and Richardson scored on a sacrifice fly by Connor Slagill.
PC scored its third run in the top of the ninth off
Riley Arnone. Avery manufactured the run by using his speed. He reached first on a two-out infield single to shortstop. He then stole second after being picked off, went to third on an errant throw by first baseman Halstead and then scored on
Brandon Fites' overthrow to third base.
PC lefthander Brian Kehner kept the Eagles in check for six innings as he allowed only three hits and did not allow a baserunner past second base. He ran into trouble in the seventh when he issued a two-out walk to
Brandon Fite and Sullivan followed with a single. Mulkey then lined a single to right field that scored Fite with the first Eagle run.
Dalton Whitaker got credit for the win to improve to 4-3 while Robert Moss suffered the loss and falls to 3-2.