April 8, 2009
Box Score
PHILADELPHIA - A pair of freshmen - Kevin Christy and Jim Tarabocchia - led La Salle Baseball to a 10-0 shutout of Coppin State on Wednesday afternoon in non-conference action at Hank DeVincent Field.
Christy started the game - his third of the season - and threw three innings of perfect baseball with two strikeouts, while Tarabocchia got the start in right and went 2-for-4 with four RBI and a run scored.
Leading 1-0 after a John Malloy RBI double in the first, Tarabocchia laced a triple into the right-center field gap to plate a pair of Explorers in the second and then came in to score on Brian Meagher's sacrifice fly to put La Salle up 4-0.
Coppin State (0-18) registered its only two hits in the fourth inning and Francisco Rosado's single to right put runners on the corners with just one out.
Reliever Dennis Burge got the Eagles' starting pitcher Harry Williams to ground into an inning-ending double play to end the threat.
After the second, Williams settled in and - at one point - allowed just two base runners out of 13 batters, to keep the Eagles within the four-run margin.
Cody Weiss - La Salle's third pitcher of the afternoon - walked a pair of batters with two down in the fifth, but finished the inning with his third strikeout and punched out five of the six outs he recorded.
In the sixth, TJ Chism hit his team-leading eighth home run of the season to lead off the frame and Meagher followed suit in the seventh with a solo shot to left.
La Salle (13-15) pushed four more runs across the plate in the seventh - two on a Brendan Norton single to center and Tarabocchia drove in two more with a single to right center.
Christy (2-1), Burge, Weiss, and Eric Van Wyk combined for La Salle's third shutout of the season - the most in a single season since the Explorers posted three during the 2006 campaign.
The 10 runs La Salle scored now gives the Explorers three straight games with at least 10 for the first time since a three-game span April 21-24, 2003.
The Explorers, who have won four of their last five, return to action this weekend at Rhode Island for a three-game Atlantic 10 Conference series. It starts Friday with a 3 PM single game and concludes Saturday with a doubleheader starting at 12 PM.
