By Mike Lehman, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – In the first-ever meeting between the Tennessee Tech baseball team and Notre Dame, it was the Fighting Irish claiming victory in the weekend's series opener, 14-3, at Quillen Field and Bush Stadium at the Averitt Express Baseball Complex.
A contest that was much closer than the final score indicated, the visitors from South Bend, Ind. pulled away with a pair of big offensive frames in the eighth and ninth. Notre Dame (6-2) plated nine runs over the final two innings of the day, turning in three of its six long balls to provide the damage.
The Golden Eagles (6-3) struggled to get much going with the bats against the Fighting Irish pitching staff, which combined to allow just three hits with 12 strikeouts.
Tech hurler Landon Smiddy turned in a performance better than the numbers indicated, with three mistakes all finishing as round-trippers. While the right-hander surrendered four earned runs and five overall, he mostly gave up soft contact and punched out three.
Notre Dame picked up three runs in the first, with the lead-off batter reaching on an error and later scoring on a light flair to right field. The first mistake of the day, an 0-2 offering, was turned around for a dinger, leading to the 3-0 lead for the Fighting Irish early.
From there, Smiddy locked in, allowing just one hit over the next four frames. Trotting back out in the sixth, the ETSU transfer gave up two solo homers before calling it a day with 5.2 innings of work.
The purple and gold got right back in the contest in the bottom half of the inning, with second baseman Troy Baunsgard and catcher Hayden Gilliland drawing back-to-back walks on full counts to prompt a pitching visit by the Fighting Irish.
The meeting didn't work, as center fielder Nicho Jordan turned on the first pitch he saw for a mammoth, three-run bomb to right-center field. Picking up his first jack of the year, Jordan trimmed the Notre Dame lead to just two.
After the two sides traded zeroes in the seventh, the Fighting Irish gathered their fourth long ball, a two-run shot, on a 3-2 offering left up in the zone. They scored two more times in the inning following an error, accounting for a pair of unearned runs.
In the ninth, Notre Dame kept swinging, gathering two more round-trippers and five runs total on four hits to put the game out of reach at 14-3.
Gilliland extended his remarkable streak of reaching base safely to a ridiculous 13 consecutive at-bats before fouling out to the catcher to end the eighth inning. He picked up one of Tech's three base knocks on the day and walked twice.
Game two of the weekend series is scheduled for a 2:00 p.m. CT first pitch at the Quill on Saturday afternoon.
Photo by Jim Dillon
