Wittenberg Picks Up Key Split With Denison
The Wittenberg Tigers spent eight days watching the radar screens, hoping to play baseball. It was worth the wait as the Tigers pulled off a split with the homestanding Denison Big Red, winning the first game 5-2 and losing the nightcap 13-5 on a cold, blustery night.
GRANVILLE, Ohio - The Wittenberg Tigers spent eight days watching the radar screens, hoping to play baseball. It was worth the wait as the Tigers pulled off a split with the homestanding Denison Big Red, winning the first game 5-2 and losing the nightcap 13-5 on a cold, blustery night.
The loss snapped a timely eight-game win streak for the Tigers and the split moved them to 21-14 overall and 9-5 in the North Coast Athletic Conference West Division, good for a second-place tie with Ohio Wesleyan, which swept Earlham. Denison clinched the division title with a 12-2 record.
The key was the opener as the Tigers used some timely hitting to make a winner of senior ace Kurt Hartfelder for the seventh time in eight complete-game starts in 2005. Hartfelder scattered six hits and three walks and even weathered three Tiger errors to go the distance, in the process topping the 100-pitch mark for the first in 2005. The school record for complete games is 10, set by Kevin Tatar in 1991.
Offensively, the Tigers got all they needed in a three-run fourth inning as junior Justin McCulla and senior Matt Foster came up with big RBI base hits. Then junior Brian Hampp added a run on a wild pitch in the fifth and he drove in the final insurance score in the sixth. Hampp, junior K.R. Schlievert and sophomore Andrew Wellman all finished with two hits in the game.
In Game 2, three Tiger relievers got their work in but without much success as the Big Red pounded out 17 hits and scored 10 runs in the fifth and sixth innings to break open a close game. Hampp and junior Brad Koopman each had two hits in the game, and senior Jon Komperda added a two-run single in the Tigers' four-run fifth inning. However, after taking a 5-3 lead, the Tigers allowed 10 unanswered runs for the final margin of defeat.
The win moved Wittenberg into the NCAC Tournament for the first time in three years by virtue of a tiebreaker with co-second place finisher Ohio Wesleyan. The two teams split a four-game series in March, but Wittenberg got the edge with one win in two games against division champion Denison, as opposed to OWU's three losses in four games in a series earlier this month.
The Tigers will take on East Division champion Wooster on Saturday and Sunday at Art Murray Field on the Scots' campus. Wooster is ranked fifth in the nation currently and finished with a 15-1 mark against East Division opponents.