Houghton Earns 12-8 Win over Carroll

3/28/2013 7:10:00 AM

WINTER HAVEN, Fla. -- The Highlanders jumped out to an early lead and held on for a12-8 win over Carroll (Wis.) University in baseball action on Wednesday.

Houghton scored one in the first and five in the second inning. The Pioneers, however, continued to hang around, homering in the third and adding single runs in the fourth and fifth innings.

After eight innings, the Highlanders clung to a slim 9-7 lead. After a leadoff strikeout in the ninth, Michael Knapp (Brockport, NY) collected his third hit of the day, then moved to third on a single to right by Kameron Konert (Bolivar, NY, Bolivar-Richburg CS). After Konert stole second, the Pioneers elected to intentionally walk Jacob Bannerman (Wasaga Beach, ON, Canada, Stayner Collegiate Institute) loading the bases. After a short fly out to right field by Ignacio Villalobos (Brantford, ON, Canada, Assumption College School)  Michael Kerr (Hamburg, NY, Hamburg HS) pinch hit for Christopher McKay (Oakville, ON, Canada) and dropped a base hit just inside the right field line, clearing the bases and leaving Kerr standing at third with a 12-7 lead.

Despite giving up one more run in the bottom of the ninth, Bannerman closed the door on the Pioneers to earn the save.

Kevin Cassar (Mississauga, ON, Canada) picked his second win of the year, pitching six solid innings, giving up only two earned runs on six hit and two walks while striking out four.

“It was good to see us put together a full nine innings of baseball," said Highlander Head Coach Brian Reitnour. "We’ve played a number of games this year where we played five, six, even seven innings of good baseball but gave up a lot of runs in one or two innings. Today, we just kept going.

"We’ve played six games in the past six days, so our pitching staff was running on fumes. Kevin gave us a great effort and Jake got us the outs we needed. It was also nice to see us get some production from every spot in the order today, especially some of our freshmen.  Ben (Langdon), Jens (Omdal), Michael (Knapp) and Chris (McKay) all had some clutch hits and made great plays for us. This was truly a good team win."