The Oglethorpe baseball team couldn't get much offense going against Rhodes pitching Sunday afternoon, managing three hits against the homestanding Lynx in a 9-1 defeat in Memphis, Tennessee, dropping all three games of their final SAA series of the season. With the loss, the Stormy Petrels fell to 19-20 on the year overall and 9-12 in SAA play, locking them into sixth place in the league headed into next weekend's SAA Tournament.
The Petrels got solid starting pitching from senior right-hander Sam Franklin Sunday, but three errors led to four unearned runs over the first three innings. Franklin wound up suffering the loss despite not allowing an earned run over four innings of work and allowing just three hits. He did walk four Rhodes batters.
The Lynx scored their first three runs in the first inning, then added the fourth in the bottom of the third. With a 4-0 lead headed into the seventh, Rhodes all but put the game away from that point with three in the seventh and two in the eighth, building a 9-0 advantage.
Meanwhile, the visitors were stymied much of the day by Rhodes pitcher Adam Putnam. The Petrels left a pair aboard in the third and stranded sophomore catcher Adrian Celata at second in the fourth after he led off the inning with a double, but that was as close as they would get until the ninth. The Petrels answered back with a single run in the final frame on yet another home run by Celata, his league-leading 12th of the season for his league-leading 39th RBI. It wasn't enough, however, as the Lynx got out of the inning and secured the victory.
Celata finished the day 2 for 4 with the solo home run and double, and was the only Petrel with multiple hits in the contest.
"This was just a tough weekend for us," said Oglethorpe head coach Dan Giordano. "We couldn't really get the bats going much of the series. We had decent pitching in spots, but when you score three runs in a 3-game series, it's tough to win. We've got a game against nationally-ranked Emory this week, though, and then we've got the conference tournament beginning next weekend. We've got another shot at Rhodes in Game 1 of that tournament, too, and the tournament is a new season for everybody. We'll be ready."
The Petrels finish sixth in the league with their 9-12 conference record, and will travel to Conway, Arkansas, for their SAA Tournament pod beginning Friday. They'll face a familiar foe in their first game there, as Rhodes took the No. 3 seed. On Saturday, the winner of that game will take on the winner of the game between second-seeded Hendrix and seventh-seeded Centre, while the loser of the Oglethorpe-Rhodes game will take on the loser of the Centre-Hendrix contest.