Lehigh University
George Mason
George Mason takes second straight over Lehigh
3/14/2009 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
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“We scrapped and got some hits, but we couldn’t get over the hump,” Lehigh head coach Sean Leary said. “Give credit to their pitchers for making some tough pitches in tough situations. We battled to get guys on base and they just made pitchers when they needed it”
Mike Modica earned the win for George Mason, who improves to 10-3 on the season. Lebo was charged with the loss despite pitching six strong innings and giving up just three runs. Lebo falls to 0-3 on the season.
“He threw the ball terrific today,” Leary said. “He did a great job keeping them off balance. He threw six good innings against a very good hitting team.”
George Mason struck first scoring a run in the second inning on a Brent Weiss sacrifice fly. Lehigh answered with a run of its own in the fifth to tie the score at one when Goldman drove in Billy Swenson with an RBI single.
“He battled hard against a good lefty today,” Leary said of Goldman. “He had some pretty good at bats, and just had a nice game overall for us.”
The Patriots took the lead for good with two runs in the bottom of the fifth. Lebo looked to be cruising through another inning after retiring the first two batters, but a two-out walk opened the door for Justin Bour to put the Patriots on top with a two-run homer.
With Ken Longernecker on to replace Lebo in the seventh, George Mason tacked on two more insurance runs to put the game away. Shane Davis ripped a single to right, scoring two runners to extend the lead to 5-1.
Cory Kent replaced Longernecker in the seventh and pitched 1.2 perfect innings to keep Lehigh in the game.
Goldman did his best to bring the Mountain Hawks back in the ninth, driving in his second run of the day with an infield single. But the Lehigh rally fell short as Ryan Brecko slammed the door shut for his fourth save of the season.
“This is the best game we’ve played all year probably,” Leary said. “We didn’t make any mistakes defensively. We pitched pretty well. We just didn’t happen to win the game. It was certainly a step in the right direction today.”
Lehigh returns to action one more time against George Mason on Sunday afternoon for the third and final game of the series against the Patriots.
