Beau Taylor has been known for his bat in his two-plus season in a UCF baseball uniform, but he had never hit a grand slam in his career with the Knights.
That ended Friday.
With runners on every base in the bottom of the eighth inning, Taylor unloaded on a 1-2 pitch, crushing the ball over the right-field fence for his first career grand slam, en route to leading the Knights to a 9-2 victory over Dartmouth at Jay Bergman Field.
“I was just thinking he wasn’t going to get me out in this situation,” said Taylor, who finished the game 3-for-4 with four RBI. “I’m just going to hit the ball hard, get it deep and get the run in. So I didn’t think it would be the grand slam there.”
Taylor wasn’t the only Knight to come up clutch for the win. Danny Winkler started his third career game for the Knights and was on point, tossing six innings, striking out nine and not allowing a walk for his second win of the season. Nick Ciccio pitched three innings of relief, giving up just one hit and not allowing a run en route to notching his second save of the season. Ciccio has yet to surrender a run in three outings.
“I talked about it last week after Alabama, the two things from a pitching standpoint that we really needed to do was our starters needed to go deep,” head coach Terry Rooney said. “We [also] needed to find a lefty out of the pen, and perhaps we did that tonight.”
Up 1-0 in the bottom of the third, Darnell Sweeney stepped up to bat and lined a single to left, driving in Ronnie Richardson to give the Knights a 2-0 lead. Dartmouth answered in the third after a Winkler wild pitch allowed Chris O’Dowd to score, cutting the UCF lead in half. Winkler, who threw a season-high 115 pitches in the game, then struck out the following batter to end the inning and limit the damage.
Jonathan Griffin led off the following inning with a double to right and Derek Luciano eventually brought him around to score on a single to right, giving the Knights a 3-1 edge. Dartmouth answered again in the top of the fifth, pulling to within 3-2.
Enter Ciccio.
The lefty kept Dartmouth in check, not allowing them a hit until the final inning, helping set up Taylor’s heroics.
Ryan Breen led off the inning with a double followed by an RBI single by Travis Shreve and a Richardson sac fly. Taylor then stepped up to the plate and launched a breaking ball in to the bleachers to ensure the win.
“I had to wait and see [if the ball was going to get out],” Taylor said. “I gave a little fist pump as I was rounding first. I didn’t know it was going to get out, but it just crept over [the wall] at the end, so I was excited about that.”
