The Richmond baseball team launched four home runs, including a three-run shot from freshman SS Mike Small, and the Spiders held off a ninth-inning rally to preserve a masterpiece by Bret Williams and beat Xavier, 8-6, Friday in Cincinnati.
Small, Billy Barber, Bryan Conway and Phil Ruzbarsky each homered for Richmond, and Williams went eight strong innings for the second-straight Friday to lift the Spiders to 4-0 in the Atlantic 10 and 16-12-2 overall.
Richmond has won 12 of its last 14 games.
Williams, who redshirted as a freshman at Xavier before transferring to Patrick Henry Community College and then to Richmond, allowed just seven hits and a run over his eight innings of work to improve to 5-0 overall (2-0 in the A-10). He turned an 8-1 lead over to the bullpen to start the bottom of the ninth.
Richmond, though, pushed four across in the third inning and never looked back. With the bases loaded, the Spiders broke a scoreless tie when Conway scored on a wild pitch. Small followed with his first college homer – a three-run shot to put the Spiders up 4-0.
Barber and Conway lifted solo shots in the fourth inning, Ruzbarsky’s homered in the eighth inning to make it 7-1 and Matt Zink doubled home Small, who walked, to put the Spiders up 8-1 in the ninth.
Small, Barber and Conway each had two of Richmond’s nine hits.
But three-consecutive one-out singles preceded a grand-slam home run off the bat of Ben Thomas that put the Musketeers (17-15, 2-5) back in the game.
Junior closer Alex Maffett emerged to get the final two outs around three singles and an RBI from Mark Elwell to nail down his fourth save of the season. Tyler Koors was hung the loss for Xavier, allowing five hits and six runs over four innings as he slipped to 3-2.
The four home runs was a season-high by Richmond.
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