Baseball | 3/7/2020 11:13:00 PM
AUBURNDALE, Fla. – The nationally-ranked St. John Fisher College baseball team wrapped up its spring trip as the Cardinals defeated John Carroll University, 5-3, on Saturday at the Lake Myrtle Sports Complex as part of the RussMatt Central Florida Invitational. With the win, Fisher, which is ranked 14th in the latest D3baseball.com national poll, improved to 7-4 while the Blue Streaks concluded the day at 7-4.
Junior
RJ Kuruts was electric on the mound for Fisher after fooling the Blue Streaks for six innings. Kuruts moved to 2-0 on the year after allowing three unearned runs on six hits with a career-high 11 strikeouts.
Kenneth Westbrook pitched 1.2 hitless innings and
Connor McHugh earned his first-career save after going 1.1 innings with two strikeouts.
Fisher took an early 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning after
Antony Mantova worked a walk with the bases load. The Cardinals tacked on two more runs in the third inning as Mantova doubled in a run before
Adam Zebrowski pushed a run across with a groundout to short that made it 3-0.
Trailing by three, John Carroll's bats came to life in the bottom of the fifth with three runs on two hits and a pair of Fisher errors to tie the game, but the Cardinals countered in the top of the seventh as
Brian Norsen crushed his fifth home run of the year to make it 5-3.
The Blue Streaks had the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth, but Fisher worked into and out of trouble as McHugh came in and got the next hitter to strikeout looking to end the threat.
Fisher is scheduled to travel to Pennsylvania on Saturday for a pair at Neumann University. First pitch is slated for 12 p.m.
