AMBLER, PA - The La Salle University Baseball team scored three unearned runs in the eighth inning to break a 3-3 tie and won the series opener over Temple, 7-4, on Thursday afternoon at Skip Wilson Field. Neither team put together much offense early on, combining for four hits and no runs until the bottom of the fifth, but the late innings belonged to La Salle.
John Rickards helped lead the Explorers to victory with a 2-for-4 effort with a two-RBI triple in the sixth and a solo home run ninth. The win was La Salle's 10th in the Atlantic 10 Conference, the most since 1999, and with a win in either of the last two games with the Owls, it will mark the most ever victories since joining the A-10.
With the Thursday conference game throwing a wrench into each team's starting rotation, two pitchers that normally come out of the bullpen received the start. Temple's Eric Fritz and La Salle's John Reifsnyder, two pitchers who combined for three starts this season, battled over the first half of the game.
Neither pitcher factored into the decision, but both put up solid numbers. Fritz scattered three hits in 5.1 innings and allowed two earned runs, while Reifsnyder went six frames and allowed a single earned run.
Temple (12-39, 6-17) got on the board first in the fifth when Casey Sellen's double-play groundball scored Steve Mury, who reached on an error.
La Salle (18-31, 10-14 A-10) answered back in the top of the sixth, scoring three runs, two on Rickards' triple and he later scored on Mike Essery's groundball.
Trailing 3-1, the Owls evened the score with two runs in the seventh. Mike Sweet led off with a single, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Carmen Del Mastro and scored on a double by Sellen. A single by Jamie Abercrombie plated Sellen to tie the score.
With Tim Foulkrod in for relief of Fritz, La Salle took advantage of a costly Temple error to score three unearned runs in the eighth. A bases-loaded line drive to third was dropped, and instead of an inning-ending double-play, the Explorers scored the go-ahead run and added two more to take a 6-3 lead after eight.
Rickards hit his seventh homer of the season to left-center to put the visitors up 7-3. Temple tried to put together a two-out rally in its final at-bat. Swope doubled home Abercrombie but it was all the home team could muster.
Gerard Breslin (5-5) earned the win in relief, pitching three innings, allowing two earned runs and striking out five. Foulkrod (1-9) suffered the loss, allowing one earned run in 3.2 innings.
The series continues on Friday at 1 PM in Ambler.
