Box Score Game 1 -
Box Score Game 2
by Cody Swartz, GoMessiah.com reporter
Grantham, PA - The scoreboard didn't even begin to tell the frustration the Messiah Falcons and their fans felt in the Saturday conference doubleheader against the Albright College Lions. Messiah (6-18, 2-7) never led in either contest, falling by 11-6 and 5-0 scores on their home field.
“This was very disappointing,” Messiah head coach Steve DeRiggs said. “We just didn't come to play today. We didn't play with passion, we were flat, and we didn't respond to the situation. They flat out beat us. They were better prepared and they executed better. We didn't have it.”
The Falcons fell behind 5-0 in both contests, and while they managed to muster six runs of offense in the first game, they were blanked in the second game for seven innings. It was an incredibly underwhelming performance by a Messiah squad that desperately needed the conference wins; the Falcons now fall to just 2-7 in the Commonwealth Conference and an awful 0-7 on their home Starry Field.
Sophomore
Paul Broomell began the first game for the Falcons on the mound. He was hit hard for three runs in the first inning and two more in the second, putting Messiah in an early 5-0 deficit.
Senior
John Brubaker got the Falcons on the board in the bottom of the second frame on some heads-up baserunning; the shortstop singled, advanced to second on a wild pitch, took third on a fly ball to the outfield, and scored on sophomore
David Sletta's sacrifice fly.
Senior
Ryan Brown blasted his team-high sixth home run of the season in the third inning, cutting the deficit to a 5-2 game and giving Messiah a glimmer of hope.
Albright jumped back with four runs on five hits in the top of the fourth inning, taking a 9-2 lead, and another run in the sixth made it a 10-2 game.
Messiah responded with two runs on a two-run double by Sletta in the bottom of the sixth and an additional pair of runs in the last chance in the seventh inning, but that merely made it an 11-6 final score, as the Falcons couldn't overcome their early deficit.
Broomell (1-3) took the loss, giving up nine runs (five earned) in 3.1 innings on the mound.
Game Two
After three innings of this game, it appeared as if the first team to score would win. And that's precisely what happened, when the Lions scored five times in a two-inning span off Messiah sophomore starter
Jon Lapp and never looked back.
Lapp (0-4) was phenomenal for the first three innings of the contest, even taking a no-hitter into the fourth inning in what was a pitching duel. The Lions then exploded for nine hits in a 15-batter stretch, putting the game out of reach with the Messiah offense unable to piece together even a lone run.
“I thought Lapp pitched with command, and his velocity was up,” DeRiggs said. “He was very good for us early on and then they just strung together a bunch of hits and capitalized on them.”
Freshmen
Derek Drake and
Zach Brubaker accounted for all five of the Messiah hits in the second contest, with Drake going 3-for-3 and Brubaker adding two of his own. While it was an impressive performance by the two first-year players in the starting lineup, the 0-for-20 showing from the upperclassmen told the whole story.
Messiah pieced together what looked to be a small rally in their last chance in the seventh inning with a pair of two-out singles by Drake and Brubaker, but a strikeout looking sealed the fate of last year's Commonwealth Conference champions.
Drake highlighted the offense with a four-hit day, reaching base five times in all.
Zach Brubaker added three singles of his own, as did Sprengle, and Sletta finished with two hits and three runs batted in.
The Falcons play again on Wednesday, an away non-conference matchup at Dickinson College that is a makeup of an earlier rescheduled contest. Messiah plays its next conference games in two weeks, a home Friday matchup against Widener University at 3:30 p.m.
