A&T Drops First Game of the Year in Back-and-Forth Battle
VERO BEACH, Fla. – North Carolina A&T's baseball team made a quick turnaround from their away game on Tuesday to compete in the Andre Dawson Classic featuring six historically black colleges and or university (HBCU) programs to travel to Vero Beach, Florida. Unfortunately, the Aggies lost their opening game of the event, 7-5, to the Prairie View A&M University Panthers in a highly competitive game that came down to the last pitch at Holman Stadium on Friday.
The tournament is named for Major League Baseball legend and Florida A&M University alumnus Andre Dawson, an eight-time All-Star and the 1987 National League MVP.
Junior Tre Williams led the Aggie offense by going 3-for-5 with two RBI and a run scored. He hammered a two-strike off-speed pitch off right-handed pitcher Elijah Breeden (W, 1-0) in the visitor's seventh inning over the wall in left field to give A&T a 5-4 advantage. PVAMU quickly responded in its half of the seventh. Michael Burroughs started the inning with a solo home run over the right-field fence, knotting the game at 5-5. Trenton Bush drove in another runner later in the frame with a triple to right field, putting the Panthers on top.
The Aggies could not get any base runners on during the eighth, leaving the score at 6-5. Senior RHP Jake Delisi (L, 0-1) was called on for relief in the bottom half. The Panthers Isaac Davila ambushed a fastball, hitting it into the jet stream of wind for a solo home run to make the game 7-5. Delisi showed great poise on the mound, battling around another hit by Burroughs by ending the inning with a strikeout.
A&T junior third baseman AJ Jones ripped a single into center field with one out in the Aggies ninth off Victor Mendoza (S, 1), putting the tying run at the plate. But PAVAMU's defense was positioned perfectly up the middle against a Williams ground ball, turning into a double play to end the game.
Senior RHP Coley Kilpatrick got the start for the Aggies, going four innings, surrendering two runs and striking out three. When he left the game, the Aggies held a 3-2 lead after graduate first baseman Tatsunori Negishi hit a two-run RBI double to score Jones, who reached on an error, and junior catcher Canyon Brown, who reached on a single.
After giving up a hit to Burroughs to open the fifth, the Aggies turned to senior RHP Connor Blantz. The Aggies escaped the inning with Blantz striking out two and Brown throwing out Burroughs trying to steal. The Panthers captured the lead in the sixth as Davila in an RBI single up the middle to tie the game at 3-3 before scoring on a fielding error to take a 4-3 lead going into the seventh.
A&T scrapped across 10 hits today. Jones had three hits, and Negishi turned in two hits with two RBI. The Aggies will look to respond tomorrow with a matchup against Southern University at noon. The game will be on MLB.com.
