On a weekend when most Virginia fans were concentrating on University Hall, the baseball team took two of three games against Penn State across the street at U.Va. Baseball Field.
The Cavaliers (5-1) swept a doubleheader Saturday by crushing the Nittany Lions 15-4 in the early game and squeaking by 6-5 later in the afternoon. They lost 7-6 in 10 innings Sunday.
Virginia fell behind 4-0 in the first Saturday game before erupting for 10 runs in the sixth inning behind senior Mark Rueffert's grand slam. They added three more in the seventh and two more in the eighth to win 51-4 over Penn State (2-5). The win improved senior pitcher Brandon Creswell's season record to 2-0.
The second game, scheduled for seven innings, began just as auspiciously for the Cavaliers. Virginia jumped out to a 5-1 lead, but Penn State answered with four runs in their final at-bat to tie the game 5-5 and sent it into extra innings.
In the bottom of the ninth with two out, Rueffert was Virginia's hero once again. He ripped the ball up the middle to score sophomore Shawn McCleary and give Virginia the 6-5 win. Sophomore southpaw Greg Hansard earned his first win of the season with his two-strikeout relief performance.
Senior Dan Street, last week's ACC Player of the Week, took the mound against Justin Nash on Sunday to try to complete a sweep of Penn State.
The Nittany Lions jumped out to an early lead behind Chris Wright's two-run homer, but the Cavaliers answered with two in the bottom of the first. Virginia capitalized on a Penn State error at third and added two more in the second inning. The score remained 4-2 until the sixth when, with one out, junior David Stone scored sophomore Chris Sweet from third with a sacrifice fly. Senior Jon Benick followed with a walk, and senior Hunter Wyant hit a double that scored another run and chased Nash from the game. Relief pitcher Aaron Tressler struck out freshman Joe Koshansky to end the inning.
Street came out of the game in the eighth after giving up three hard-hit balls, a walk and one wild pitch. He finished with six strikeouts.
"Dan Street did a good job," coach Dennis Womack said. "I didn't want to take him out, but he had thrown a lot of pitches."
Freshman Jeff Kamrath came in and threw a wild pitch and gave up a game-tying single before getting the third out.
After Virginia turned a controversial double play in the ninth inning, the game headed into extra innings. Penn State coach Joe Hindelang was so angry about the call that umpires ejected him from the game.
The Nittany Lions pulled through for their coach in the top of the 10th when pinch hitter Mike DeRenzo doubled to put Penn State up for good. The Cavaliers could not put together a run in the bottom of the 10th and the Nittany Lions won 7-6.
"It was disappointing," Stone said. "The first loss is always tough when you know you could have swept" the series.
Despite the loss, Womack thought that the weekend a success.
"We had a good weekend, we won two out of three," Womack added. "We had an opportunity to win all three games. With close games, you can always look back at one or two mistakes, but I think it was correctable stuff. We played hard all weekend. We went after 'em"
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