Entering this season with lofty goals, GW had outscored the University of Maryland Eastern Shore by 20 combined runs in three games.
Then came March 3, when the Colonials lost by five runs to the Hawks at home. After that loss, GW’s legendary beards were nearly sent under the knife, less than a month into the season.
Instead, the beards lasted for a bit, the Colonials took a road trip to California, battled some of the top teams in the country and worked their way up to the most wins in the Atlantic 10. But what they had yet to accomplish was revenge, until a 16-hit night earned GW a 10-1 win against UMES in Princess Anne, Md. on Wednesday to improve to 22-10 on the season.
“I just reminded them that if you take a team lightly, they’ll do to you what they did to you last time,” head coach Gregg Ritchie said. “You guys really need to play this game as if it’s a playoff game.”
Although the hitting numbers posted were strong, the runs were spread across three innings: the second, seventh and the five-run eighth. Even with big numbers on the board, though, Ritchie was not entirely satisfied.
“We played OK,” Ritchie said. “It wasn’t the best game we played. It wasn’t the worst. It was just OK. We did what we set out to do, which is stick to the game plan, execute it better, regardless of whether we got hits early on, the at-bats were extremely productive toward the game plan.”
The five sophomores in the starting lineup went a combined 12-24. Bobby Campbell and Andrew Selby stayed hot with three hits on five at-bats each and a run for Selby. Joey Bartosic collected two hits, scored two runs and drove in one. Eli Kashi, notably in the nine-hole, went 3-4, both driving in and scoring a pair of runs.
Others rung in, too, like freshman Robbie Metz, who went 1-5 with three hard hit balls recorded for outs, plus a walk to later score in the big five-run eighth inning. Freshman Brandon Chapman doubled to left to drive in two in that same inning. UMES threw three different pitchers in the one inning – and nine total in the game.
On the pitching end for GW, they started with knowledge of a long day from the pen. Sophomore Jordan Sheinkop continued to come back from an offseason injury. He started the game, going two innings with 26 pitches, giving up three hits.
“It makes it a whole lot more difficult. To have a guy go out there and know he’s going to get the start. He’s going to compete for six or seven innings, that’s a much easier task,” Ritchie said.
Freshman Kevin Hodgson did not have his best stuff and was unable to get out of the third inning. He was credited with the one run the Colonials’ pitching staff allowed on the day. Freshman Brady Renner would pick up the win, his second on the season, going 2.1 innings and allowing one hit.
Freshman Tyler Swiggart threw the longest out of the staff, going three innings and throwing 32 pitches.
“I wanted [Hodgson] to go two innings,” Ritchie said. “Swiggart did a really nice job of making up that difference of not being able to throw Hodgson two innings. He made his best pitches and had a really low pitch count.”
With no pitcher throwing over 40 pitches, most of the bullpen will remain available heading into a weekend conference series at home against Fordham. The first game starts Friday at 3 p.m., with junior Bobby LeWarne as the probable starter looking to extend his A-10 lead in wins to seven.
