VMI baseball falls to William and Mary, 8-2

The William & Mary Tribe scored the first seven runs of the game and never looked back en route to an 8-2 win over the VMI Keydets in non-conference baseball action Tuesday night in Lexington, Va. The win snapped VMI’s three-game win streak over the Tribe, which had been the Keydets’ longest in the series since 1996.

William & Mary (19-19) jumped out to the early 1-0 lead on Tim Hoehn’s second home run of the season. The Tribe then scored twice in the third before notching single runs in the fourth and sixth, and capped things off with two more runs in the seventh. The Keydets (12-22) scored twice in the bottom of that inning, including a leadoff home run by Matt Winn, but could not overcome the early deficit.

Mitchell Aker (1-1) picked up the win for the visitors, as he pitched 6 2/3 innings and allowed two runs on four hits. He walked one and struck out six. Matthew Eagle dropped to 0-5 with the loss after giving up three runs in three innings of work.

After Hoehn went deep, W&M scored twice in the third. Cullen Large led off with an infield hit and stole second. One out later, Charley Gould singled and a fielder’s choice with no runners retired scored Large for a 2-0 Tribe lead. Josh Smith had a sacrifice fly later in the inning to make it 3-0.

A home run by Large off Micah Gorman pushed the margin to four in the fourth, and Willie Shaw had a RBI single in the sixth for a 5-0 lead. Gould homered in the seventh and a fielding error allowed a seventh run to score in the frame.

Winn then led off the bottom of the inning with a home run, his ninth of the year, to cut the margin to 7-1, and a Brandon Angus two-out RBI single pulled the Keydets within five. The Tribe tacked on a run in the eighth to account for the final margin.

Offensively, Angus had VMI‘s lone two-hit game while four of the top five hitters in William & Mary’s batting order had at least two hits, led by Gould’s 3 for 5, two RBI game.

VMI baseball will return to action Friday, when the Keydets open a three-game SoCon series in Charleston, S.C. against The Citadel Bulldogs. First pitch is set for 6 p.m.