Charleston Southern wins Game 1 over Longwood, 7-3

The Charleston Southern Buccaneers won Game 1 of a three-game weekend series, 7-3,over Longwood. Both teams are still very much alive in the Big South playoff race

The Buccaneers Nick Rodriguez led the game offensively with three hits in three at-bats, one of which was a double. The Bucs offense as a whole had 14 hits and four batters who had multi-hit games

Michael Peterson and Eliot Dix combined for five of the eight Longwood hits, and had all three RBI for the Lancers on the afternoon.

“Basically, it’s still possible,” said head coach Chad Oxendine on what he told his team after the game. “I told them tomorrow we have to come with the same energy and focus that we had today and leave it all out on the field. All we can do is control what we can control. We can’t control if we’ll win or lose or where the ball will go when we hit it. We can control our energy and focus and that’s what we’ll do.”

“Today I thought we were locked in I really did. I thought we had a good shot. Kaleb Hill for Charleston Southern was really, really good tonight. We tip our hat to him. That’s the great thing about baseball is sometimes you’ll get beat but we have two big games tomorrow and we control our own destiny.”

Charleston Southern (19-28, 11-11) scored two in both the first and second innings to gain an early lead. Hogan McIntosh hit a two-run homer to center field to story the first inning. Connor Carter hit a bases loaded sac fly in the second and Austen Izzio had an infield single that scored another to give the Buccaneers the four-run lead.

Longwood (20-31,10-12) answered in the bottom of the third with three of their own. A walk and three consecutive singles by Hayden Harris, Michael Peterson and Eliot Dix scored all three runs, but the rally stopped there.

The Buccaneers responded with another two run inning, this time in the fifth inning. Carter singled to lead off the inning and Casey Asman tripled him home. A sacrifice fly from McIntosh capped the fifth inning rally. The Bucs added to their lead in the top half of the seventh after McIntosh singled to short stop and stole second only to be hit home by a Ryan Waldschmidt single to left field.

Andrew Potojecki (6-6) started on the mound for Longwood and allowed four runs on four hits in two innings of work. He struck out three. The Lancers bullpen, Dominick D’Ercole and Logan Berrier allowed three runs in the remaining seven innings while they struck out four.

Daniel Padysak started for the Buccaneers and surrendered three runs in two innings of work while he gave up four hits. The Charleston Southern bullpen of Kaleb Hill (5-5) and Evan Truitt shut down the Longwood offense, striking out six in the final seven frames.

Longwood and Charleston Southern return to action tomorrow in a doubleheader that is slated to start at 1 p.m.