University of North Carolina Ashville Athletics
UNC Asheville
Iona
Baseball Hosts Iona For Home-Opening Series This Weekend
03.02.2017 | Baseball
Asheville-Iona Series Notes (PDF)
ASHEVILLE, N.C. – After having both mid-week games altered due to rain, the UNC Asheville baseball team will get back into action this weekend with a three-game series against Iona at Greenwood Baseball Field. The series with the Gaels will mark the home-opening series for the Bulldogs, who have played seven road games to open the 2017 season.
THE MATCHUP
Teams:Â UNC Asheville (3-4) vs. Iona (2-1)
Location:Â Asheville, N.C. / Greenwood Baseball Field
When:Â Friday, March 2, 3 p.m. / Saturday, March 3, 1 p.m. / Sunday, March 4, 12 p.m.
Live Stats:Â www.uncabulldogs.com
Twitter:Â @ashevilledogs #ThePursuit
BULLDOG BITES
INSIDE THE SERIES: 2017 will mark just the second time the Bulldogs and Gaels have met on the baseball diamond. Last season, Iona swept the series 3-0 at Greenwood Field by scores of 6-5, 10-9 and 14-4.
SCOUTING THE GAELS: Iona enters the weekend series in Asheville 2-1 on the year, having played just one series so far. The Gaels went on the road last weekend and defeated North Carolina Central 2-1 by scores of 3-1, 12-6 and 5-7. Fran Kinsey, Tyler Bruno, Matt Byrne and Sean Scales have started all three games for the Gaels thus far. Kinsey leads the quartet with a .462 batting average. Scales and Lou Matarazzo lead the team with four RBIs and Matarazzo has the only home run on the young season. On the mound, Patrick Ryan boasts five strikeouts. Bill Maier, Ryan and Joe DeRosa were the starting pitchers last weekend. All three are right-handers. Maier, last weekend's Friday starter is a senior while Ryan and DeRosa are both juniors. The Gaels are led by 12th-year head coach Pat Carey. Carey and Asheville's head coach, Scott Friedholm, played together at Providence College from 1996-1998.
WEEKEND ROTATION: This weekend, the Bulldogs will make a slight adjustment to the weekend rotation. Friday will still belong to freshman lefty Greg Gasparro but Saturday will feature Joe Zayatz making his first start of the 2017 season. Sunday will see senior southpaw Spencer Orr toe the rubber for the Bulldogs. In two starts so far this season, Gasparro has pitched 8.1 innings and struck out seven batters. He enters the weekend with a 6.48 ERA. Zayatz has made one appearance in 2017, striking out one batter compared to giving up one hit. Orr boasts the most experience of the Bulldogs' pitching corps this season, having pitched 12.1 innings. He leads the team with eight strikeouts and brings a 6.57 ERA into Sunday.
LAST TIME OUT (at Wofford, 2/26/17): Justin Woods has just about done it all this week, and Sunday he added to his already impressive week as he came on to pitch the final two innings against Wofford as he earned the 7-6 win on the mound for the UNC Asheville baseball team, including striking out the final batter of the game. The Bulldogs fell behind 5-0 through the first two innings, but remained resilient and responded in a big way late in the game. Asheville began the comeback by scoring single runs in the third and fourth frames. Carmine Pagano got things going when he hit a shot to center field in the third inning, scoring Danny Wilson from third and in the next inning, Wilson doubled down the right field line to score Brandon Lankford and set the score at 5-2. Wofford scored a run in the bottom of the fifth, but starter Spencer Orr, Woods and the Bulldog defense didn't allow another run from there, including retiring 10 straight batters at one point late in the game. Asheville then did what they have done a lot of early in the season, scoring in bunches. Only this time it came at the end of the game, not at the beginning. In the eighth frame, the Bulldogs plated three runs, including two off a Lankford homer that also scored Chris Troost. Later in the inning, with bases loaded, Kole Harris drew a walk and pushed Woods across the plate to pull the Bulldogs to within one. Wofford was able to delay the inevitable by getting out of the eighth, but in the ninth, the Bulldogs struck again, this time for two runs. Tanner Bush hit a sacrifice fly to right field, scoring Derek Smith to tie the game and then, with bases loaded, Joe Gruszka wore a pitch and pushed Lankford across for the go-ahead run. Despite being ahead, the heroics were not done as Wofford got a runner aboard in the bottom of the ninth, but Gruszka gunned the pinch runner out at second, setting Woods up to record the final out via strikeout. At the plate, Lankford led the way with a 2-for-4 performance, including scoring three runs and batting in two more. The freshman third baseman now has three home runs and eight RBIs on the season. Danny Wislon and Andrew Friedholm also both had two hits in the game with Wilson going 2-for-4 with a run scored and an RBI while Friedholm went 2-for-3 at the dish. Orr had a solid day as the Bulldogs' starter, pitching seven innings that saw the senior southpaw strike out six batters. Woods (1-0) then came on for the final two innings, striking out two batters and giving up just one hit. Wofford relied on seven pitchers in the game with starter Austin Higginbotham pitching 6.2 innings while giving up six hits and two earned runs. Grant Byers (0-1) ended up being the pitcher of record.
UP NEXT: Following the home-opening series against Iona, UNC Asheville will play a mid-week road game at Appalachian State on Tuesday, March 7. First pitch of that game is slated for 4 p.m. Asheville will then welcome the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to Greenwood Field for a three-game, weekend series beginning Friday, March 10 and concluding on Sunday, March 12.
LANKFORD NAMED BIG SOUTH FRESHMAN OF THE WEEK: After a stellar week in Spartanburg, UNC Asheville baseball true freshman Brandon Lankford was named the Big South Conference's Come Ready Nutrition Freshman of the Week, as announced by the conference office Monday afternoon. Lankford's honor marks the second week in a row that a UNC Asheville freshman has earned the honor and gives UNC Asheville a sweep of the award in the first two weeks of its existence. Last week, fellow true freshman Chris Troost earned the first-ever Come Ready Nutrition Freshman of the Week honors for baseball in the Big South. Lankford led the Bulldogs to a 2-2 record this past week in Spartanburg. Over the course of the Bulldogs' four games, he batted a team-best .389 with an outstanding .833 slugging percentage and .500 on-base percentage. He led the team with four extra base knocks, including two home runs and two doubles. The third baseman from Mocksville, N.C., had multiple hits in all but one game last week and also had at least one RBI in each game. He scored seven runs himself, including the game-winner Sunday to lift Asheville over Wofford 7-6, and batted in six others. In the field, he recorded a putout and nine assists for a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage. In Wednesday's game at USC Upstate, Lankford started the scoring drive for the Bulldogs with a double to score Carmine Pagano, putting Asheville up 1-0. On Friday against Dayton, his single through the left side to score fellow freshman Kole Harris in the top of the second inning put the Bulldogs ahead of the Flyers for good. He then scored the first of his two runs of that game when Joe Tietjen doubled to left field. His second run of the game came when Tietjen ripped a home run to center field. In the game against the Flyers, Lankford went 2-for-4 at the plate and drew two walks. In the weekend finale at Wofford, Lankford went 2-for-4 with two RBIs and three runs scored. In the fourth inning, he scored off a Danny Wilson double down the right field line. Then, in the eighth inning, Lankford hit his third home run of the season, second of the week, scoring last week's Big South Come Ready Nutrition Freshman of the Week Troost. He ended his week by scoring the game-winning run in the top of the ninth inning when fellow freshman Joe Gruszka was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.
YOUNG SQUAD: The Bulldogs' starting lineup has featured 12 players who are either freshmen or sophomores. Freshmen Chris Troost, Brandon Lankford, Kole Harris, Joe Gruszka, Jake Madole, Tyler Serricchio and Greg Gasparro have all contributed in the starting lineup very early. Sophomores Carmine Pagano, Andrew Friedholm, Danny Wilson, Austin Fahr and Ryan Tapp have all picked up where they left off as freshmen and are beginning to see their roles increase as well.
MOVING RUNNERS ACROSS THE PLATE: Senior center fielder Joe Tietjen moved seven runners across the plate on Friday, Feb. 24, against Dayton, coming up just two shy of the individual single-game school record. Tietjen had a double and a home run to help his efforts. He also had two other hits that came close to clearing the fence. One was just foul and the other came up just short of the center field fence.
DOUBLING THEM UP: The Bulldogs have turned six double plays so far this season while their opponents have turned four.
A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING: Senior Justin Woods did a little bit of everything last week while in Spartanburg. The senior started his week off by recording his first career grand slam against USC Upstate on Wednesday, Feb. 22. The four-RBI performance was just the beginning as he led the team with nine RBIs on the week. For the week, he batted .313, including two home runs and a double, scored three runs and boasted a slugging percentage of .750 to go with a .450 on-base percentage. In the field, he had seven putouts. But his week didn't end there as he came on to pitch the final two innings of UNC Asheville's 7-6 come-from-behind win over Wofford on Sunday, Feb. 26, earning the win and striking out two batters, including the last batter of the game. In his two innings of work, batters hit just .167 against him (one hit) and he didn't walk a batter compared to his two strikeouts.
LANKFORD GOES YARD: Freshman third baseman Brandon Lankford leads the team with three home runs this season.
ORR MOWING THEM DOWN: Starting pitcher Spencer Orr gave the Bulldogs seven solid innings on the mound and recorded six strikeouts, giving him a team-high eight for the season.
TROOST NAMED FIRST-EVER BIG SOUTH FRESHMAN OF THE WEEK: UNC Asheville baseball true freshman Chris Troost was named the first-ever Big South Conference's Come Ready Nutrition Freshman of the Week as announced by the conference office Monday, Feb. 20. Troost led the way offensively for Asheville during the opening weekend series at Samford. The 5-8 Medford, N.J., native batted .444 through the three-game series and boasted an on-base percentage of .615 while scoring a run and batting in another. He showed enough improvement over the weekend to move up from the seven-hole of the lineup to the two-hole. In the season-opener on Friday, Troost showed a lot of patience in the batter's box to draw three walks compared to just one strikeout and also had an RBI. In Sunday's series finale, Troost went 3-for-4 at the plate with a run scored and also drew another walk. He scored his run in the ninth inning to add an important insurance run, helping Asheville defeat Samford 6-4 for the first win of the season.
TIETJEN NAMED PRESEASON ALL-CONFERENCE BY PERFECT GAME: UNC Asheville baseball player Joe Tietjen has been named to the Perfect Game Preseason Big South All-Conference Team by the staff of Perfect Game and was listed in the top-five of the top prospects of the conference for this year's graduating class. A senior outfielder from Waxhaw, N.C., Tietjen was named to the Big South All-Conference Second Team following the 2016 season. During his junior campaign, he led the team in nine offensive statistical categories, including batting average (.344), runs scored (44), hits (74), home runs (10) and stolen bases (12). He also boasted a .553 slugging percentage, batted in 55 runs and collected 119 total bases in 215 at bats. For his career, Tietjen boasts a .306 batting average, has scored 101 runs, collected 145 hits and has driven in 90 runs. He has also swiped 23 bases and has 342 putouts in the field.
QUOTABLES
On playing at home this weekend
"We've been on the road for the first two weeks of the season so it's nice to play at home this weekend. It's nice to let the guys sleep in their own beds and play in front of our own fans." – Scott Friedholm
On the weekend series with Iona
"We have a good team in Iona coming in to play three games this weekend. They opened their season well last week and will present a good challenge for us. We're still looking for more consistency. It starts on the mound with our three starters and whoever we call out of the bullpen being able to come in and continue what they've been working on. Offensively, we need to keep giving ourselves opportunities to score because that big hit is going to come, just like it did in two of the three games last weekend." - Scott Friedholm
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