DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (April 29, 2017) – North Carolina A&T still finds itself at the top of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Southern Division in baseball after splitting a doubleheader at Jackie Robinson Park Saturday against Bethune-Cookman. The Wildcats won the first game 13-1 before the Aggies recovered to win Game 2, 6-1.
The split leaves the Aggies (21-20, 11-6 MEAC) a half game ahead of Florida A&M in the southern division. More importantly, the Aggies are three games ahead of fourth-place North Carolina Central. That coupled with the fact they hold the tiebreaker over NCCU, puts the Aggies in a better position to clinch a tournament berth, a place they have not been since 2014. The Aggies Game 2 win ended a six-game streak.
Three Aggies had two hits in Game 2 including Greg White, Milton Rivera and Brandon Melendez. Kyle Clary scored twice. Meanwhile, Marcello Betances had one of his best outings of the season. He had three strikeouts over six innings pitched and only gave up one run and one hit. He did walk five, but was still able to improve to 4-3.
Betances went to the mound in the seventh inning in an attempt to earn the complete-game win. But he walked the first two batters he faced, leading to the entry of closer Cutter Dyals. Dyals, who has proven to be extremely hard to hit off this season, gave up a double to Jordan Stacey to score the Wildcats first run of the game. Things returned to normal quickly, however, as Chase DeBonis flew out to right and the final two Wildcat batters struck out to end the game.
Despite the attempted late-game surge by the Wildcats, the Aggies took early steps to make sure they had a nice lead going into the final inning. Melendez opened the game with a double followed by an RBI double from Rivera. In the second inning, a Clary double led to an RBI single to center field by Myles Sowell as the Aggies took a 2-0 advantage.
In the fourth the Aggies put together one of their signature two-out rallies. It started with what was supposed to be the third out as Clary reached on an error. Back-to-back walks to Tim Ravare and Sowell loaded the bases for Melendez who connected on a slow groundball to short. The groundball was good enough for Clary to score, but a bad throw to first allowed Ravare to score as well to give the Aggies a 4-0 lead. Sowell would score on the third error of the inning to put the Aggies ahead 5-0.
A Jarrett Norman RBI sacrifice fly in the fifth closed out the scoring for N.C. A&T. Betances was effective from there, chopping down the Wildcats in order in the fifth and sixth innings.
N.C. A&T was not as successful in Game 1. Melendez and Dawnoven Smith did have two hits apiece. In fact, the Aggies tied the game at 1 in the second inning thanks to an A.J. Hunt home run. The Wildcats, who are 24-20 overall and 11-8 in the MEAC, scored the next 12 runs. Anthony Maldonado (6-3) got the win while Michael Johnson (3-3) took the loss.
The two teams close the series Sunday at 1 p.m., at Jackie Robinson Park.
