Two homers by Nathan Eaton fueled a 15-hit attack and sent the VMI Keydets to their seventh straight win, a 13-7 win over the Furman Paladins in the middle game of a SoCon series contested Saturday in Lexington, Va.
Furman (18-21, 3-8 SoCon) jumped out to an early 5-1 lead behind two homers from Brandon Elmy, but much like what happened Friday, the Keydets (21-17, 9-5) exploded in the middle innings. An eight-run fifth gave VMI the lead for good, an inning fueled by homers from Peyton Maddox, Eaton and Matt Dunlevy.
The Paladins scored twice in the sixth to crawl back within two, but a four-spot in the bottom of the inning, including another homer by Eaton, put the game away as the Keydets equaled their longest winning streak since 2014.
The winning pitcher was Zak Kent (4-3), who was the beneficiary of the big inning. Kent gave up five runs in five innings. Jordan Beatson (1-2), making a spot start, gave up six runs in four-plus innings and was the losing pitcher.
Offensively, Dunlevy had a career-high four hits and Eaton posted the second multi-homer game of his career to lead the home team. Bret Huebner had three hits and Elmy drove in four to pace Furman.
VMI baseball will return to action Sunday as VMI bids for its first sweep of Furman since 1994. First pitch is set for 1 p.m.