BALTIMORE, Maryland April 16, 2014 - In College Baseball, there are weekend games and there are weekday games, and they are about as far apart in importance as a practice and a "real game." Almost. For the most part. Mostly, weekend games are conference games, mostly played in the form of three-games series. The weekday games provide an opportunity to get everybody some at bats, keep the bullpen at its peak, and stay competitive. Teams generally use their number one starter in the first game of every conference series, and at a lot of schools, the numbeer one pitcher is the "Friday Night Starter."
But there are exceptions. Generally, a weekday game that means a lot is against a non-conference opponent that is ranked, or against a team you have a rivalry with but isn't in your conference at the time. Sometimes, an important weekday game is against a school that, no matter what the sport, always seems to bring out the best in your school's team. A great example of this latter type of important mid-week game is today's game at College Park between Maryland and Navy. The school's are about 30 miles apart. But they are very far apart in the way their students go about things. Navy is known for its elite esprit de corps, its honor, its rigid discipline. Maryland is known for its, well, its beligerance. Some 50 years ago, give or take, in the early 1960's, a football game between the two was so heated and nasty that the two athletic directors decided they wouldn't play each other for a bit. That bit ended up being decades.
Anyway, Maryland and Navy played baseball on Wednesday in Collge Park. It was cold. At gametime the temperature was struggling to get out of the 30's. It was windy. Maryland, for the first time all season, was struggling. They had lost 3 out of their 4 games, including 2 of the 3 games last weekend at Virginia Tech, and last Wednesday's game in College Park against Mount Saint Mary's, a 3-2 loss in which they stranded 17 baserunners and left the bases loaded in all three of their final at bats.
But against Navy yesterday, the Terps seemed to work out their demons. After falling behind, 1-0, they struck for four runs in the fourth to move ahead, 4-1. After the Midshipmen got one back in the top of the fifth, Maryland scored five times in the seventh to bust the game wide open en route to an 11-4 victory. Navy used an astonishing eight pitchers in an attempt to keep Maryland under control, but it wasn't going to happen yesterday.
The big hit in the fourth inning uprising was Jose Cuas' two-run homer, his fourth of the season, which leads the Terps. In the seventh inning the key blows were a two-run single by Cuas and RBI doubles by Blake Schmidt and Kevin Martir. For the day, Cuas was 2-4 with 4 RBI's, Blake Schmidt was 3-5 with 3 RBI's, and Nick Cieri, who was 3-4. Zach Morris pitched five innings to pick up his first win of the season. He held Navy to two run, only one of which was earned, and five hits.
In other ACC scores from Wednesday, No. 1 Virginia routed William and Mary, 11-2, Duke ripped North Carolina Central by the same 11-2 score, No. 20 Miami edged Florida Atlantic, 2-1, North Carolina rallied to beat Elon, 5-4, Notre Dame beat Toledo, 4-3, Wake Forest downed Appalachian State, 4-2, Boston College got by Massachusetts-Lowell, 7-6, in 10 innings, and Kent State downed Pittsburgh, 4-1.
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