May 22, 2009

Box Score

Wilmington, N.C. - The 29th-ranked George Mason baseball team has won more than 40 games this season but they will have to wait until Monday to find out if its season ended on Friday night. The Patriots lost to UNC Wilmington 5-3 to find themselves eliminated from the CAA Tournament a game shy of the championship round. The top-seeded Patriots lost earlier in the day to Georgia State, falling quickly from the winner's bracket. The NCAA selection show will be televised on ESPN on Monday at 12:30 p.m. and Mason will hope its record and RPI will be enough to get the Patriots into the NCAA Tournament.

Mason was shut down by a starting pitcher for the second time on Friday when Daniel Cropper limited the Patriots to two runs on six hits with no walks and five strikeouts in seven and one-third innings. Bobby Leeper stepped up big with two hits and three RBI and Alex Hill had two hits and two RBI. Mason got hits from seven different players. The three runs matched a season-low for the Patriots

The Seahawks took the lead in the second scoring three unearned runs. Robbie Monday led off the inning with a single and when Alex Hill grounded a ball to second baseman Ryan Soares, he distracted the Mason junior just enough to force a fielding error putting runners on first and second. With two outs, when the inning should have been over, Bobby Leeper took a 1-1 pitch and deposited it over the fence in left-center to make it 3-0.

After struggling to get anything done against Daniel Cropper for the first five innings, the Patriots finally got on the board in the sixth when Spencer Wiggins singled up the middle, Mason's third hit of the game, and Chris Henderson followed with a home run to right-center, his 14th long ball of the year, cutting the score to 3-2. But all the momentum disappeared in the bottom of the sixth when Monday led off with a single and scored on a one-out homer from Alex Hill to make it 5-2.

In the seventh, Ryan Soares led off with a single but with one out, UNCW used a strikeout-throw out double play to end the inning. In the eighth, Brent Weiss led off with a single and Spencer Wiggins was hit by a pitch with one out to bring Henderson to the plate. Lefty Ryan Walker came on in relief and hit Henderson with his first pitch to load the bases. Again there was a pitching change for the Seahawks, this time Bryan Booth came into the game and on the first pitch, he got Scott Krieger to ground into a double play to end the inning.

Justin Bour led off the ninth with a double and Shane Davis singled to put runners on the corners with one out. Mark Hill's fielder's choice plated Bour while eliminating Davis from the base paths, making it 5-3 with two outs. Brent Weiss followed, reaching on an error, but pinch-hitter Dan Schafferman struck out to end the game.