Box Score Knoxville, Tenn. (Mar. 9, 2005) - Oakland University's baseball team was held to just four hits Wednesday as the Golden Grizzlies were shut out 15-0 by Tennessee in Knoxville. The Volunteers posted 20 hits en route to the victory as OU falls to 0-2 in the young season.
Matt Bloom (Ardmore, Okla.) registered two hits in the losing effort during the second and fourth innings. For the first three and a half innings, the Golden Grizzlies and Vols were locked at 0-0 with five hits between the two squads, including a single by
Ryan Heath (Ostrander, Ohio) in the first, a Bloom single in the second and a double down the left field line by Bloom in the fourth. However, Tennessee exploded in the fourth to score 11 runs on 11 hits. The spurt was started by a J.P. Arencibia homer, which drove in Eli Iorg who had singled to second base as the first batter of the frame. The damaging inning was ended as Joey Andrews flied out to center field, but not before consecutive RBIs drove in three more UT runners. Despite a single by
Kurt Rosenacker (Cincinnati, Ohio) to start off the fifth inning, Oakland was unable to answer and Tennessee added a run in the fifth when Iorg doubled down the left field line to score Julio Borbon. The seventh frame saw three more runs come in for the Volunteers to spike the team???s lead to 15-0, a deficit that the Golden Grizzlies were not able to recover from.
Billy Schmieder (Chillicothe, Ohio) got the start on the mound for OU with three innings of work. The Golden Grizzlies used six other pitchers in the game, though none stayed in for more than 1.1 innings. Oakland now faces Dayton in a weekend series that has been relocated to Nashville, Tenn., due to weather concerns in the Dayton area. Saturday and Sunday???s double-headers will be played at Shelby Park beginning at 1 p.m. and Noon Central, respectively.