The Oglethorpe baseball team fell to the homestanding Rhodes Lynx Sunday in Memphis, Tennessee, allowing the home team to take two of three from the series at Rhodes' Stauffer Field. The Lynx scored three runs in two of the first three innings to build a 6-0 lead, and they rode that to an 8-4 victory. The loss dropped the Petrels to 15-8 on the season overall and 5-4 in SAA play.
Down 6-0 after three innings, the Petrels found themselves with a hill to climb, but they worked their way back into the contest over the next couple of frames. They scored three in the fourth to cut the Rhodes advantage in half. Senior designated hitter Adrian Celata singled to left field with one out, then sophomore first baseman Andrew Mink walked. The two baserunners advanced 90 feet on a wild pitch, then senior second baseman Matt Motz delivered a sacrifice fly to score Oglethorpe's opening run of the game. A single from senior catcher Bobby Rezac followed, and another wild pitch scored Mink. Rezac scored on a Rhodes error to make it 6-3 in favor of the Lynx.
Oglethorpe added one more run in the fifth. After senior right fielder Patrick Burnette and Celata both singled with one out, Burnette scored on a wild pitch to make it 6-4. However, Oglethorpe was unable to get Celata in from second in that inning, and also unable to take advantage of a two-runners-on, nobody-out situation in the eighth. Rhodes pulled away with a couple more runs in the bottom half of the inning, making the score 8-4.
Celata went 2-for-4 and was the lone Petrel with multiple hits in the game. Motz's sacrifice fly was the lone RBI the Petrels tallied.
Senior right-hander Matt Davis suffered the loss to drop to 1-4 on the season. He allowed five runs on five hits over 2 1/3 innings, walking one and striking out two. Freshman right-hander Devlin Basinger also pitched well in relief, allowing just one hit over 2 1/3 innings of shutout baseball.
"This was a tough series for us against a really good Rhodes team," said Oglethorpe head coach Dan Giordano. "Our guys hung tough all weekend, but we just couldn't get the big hit today."
The Petrels will be back in action Tuesday at 4 p.m. when they host Calvin at Anderson Field. Oglethorpe will continue SAA play over the weekend, when Sewanee comes to Atlanta for a 3-game set.