The UCF baseball team brought the brooms out on Sunday.
The Knights, who took the first two games of a three-game series against Siena by scores of 11-1 and 10-1, respectively, scorched the Saints with 16 runs on 13 hits Sunday en route to a 16-4 victory at Jay Bergman Field.
UCF (3-0) took advantage of seven Siena errors and scored in every inning but the second, improving to 34-3 all-time against the Saints and nabbing their second-straight 3-0 start after sweeping Savannah State to open the 2010 season.
“I was pleased with how we played this weekend,” head coach Terry Rooney said in a release. “We played very well defensively for the most part on the weekend and we only walked one guy in three games. Going into the weekend I said two things: we have got to play fundamental baseball and we have got to compete like crazy. And I think we did that.”
Beau Taylor went 3-for-4 with three RBIs and two runs scored for the Knights. With his RBI single in the first inning, Taylor extended his hitting streak to 24 consecutive games, just two shy of the all-time streak set by Mike Myers back in the 2001 season.
Ryan Breen went a perfect 3-for-3 in the game, including three runs driven in and two walks. Travis Shreve was impressive once again for the Knights, racking up two hits and three RBI. UCF has now scored 10 or more runs in seven consecutive games dating back to last season.
The pitching staff was once again solid for the Knights. Ray Hansen started his first game in a black and gold uniform and struggled out of the game, allowing four runs and five hits in 4 2/3 innings pitched. The bullpen was once again spectacular, as Chase Bradford, Bryan Brown and Joe Rogers combined for six strikeouts and allowed just two hits over the final 4 1/3 innings. Bradford picked up his first victory of the season.
Siena looked poised to grab a win in the series in the top half of the third, when they plated three runs to take a 3-1 lead. The Knights tied up the score in the fourth but the Saints fought back in the sixth to take a 4-3 lead.
Then the Knight offense exploded.
Two Siena errors and Shreve’s two RBIs helped UCF plate five in the bottom of the sixth as the Knights scored 13 runs over the final four innings to take the game over.
For the series, UCF hit .347 as a team and had a .470 on-base percentage. They scored in the opening frame of all three games of the series.
Despite all of the successes, Rooney still sees a lot of areas the Knights need to work on heading into their game on Tuesday at Bethune-Cookman in Daytona.
“It was the first weekend and there are some things we need to tighten up, and the first thing was our baserunning,” Rooney said. “We had some baserunning issues out there, but some of them are because we are very aggressive as a team. On the other side though they weren’t because we were aggressive, they just weren’t smart. So we’ve got to do a better job on the bases.”
