KODAK, Tenn. –The fourth-seeded Lincoln Memorial University baseball team advanced to the winner's side of the bracket in the South Atlantic Conference Championship with a 9-2 win over third-seeded Carson-Newman (27-21) Friday night at Smokies Stadium. The Railsplitters (32-18) extended their winning streak to five games and remain the highest-seeded team yet to lose a game in the double-elimination tournament after all three top seeds dropped their opening games. LMU will face the No. 7 seed Tusculum, who topped No. 2 Wingate 7-2, on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m.
The Eagles will look to avoid elimination against eighth-seeded Anderson, who upset Catawba 4-1.
The Railsplitters finished the game with nine unanswered runs after Carson-Newman took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth inning. The Eagles loaded the bases with no one out against SAC Pitcher of the Year
Ethan Elliott to set up Charlie Brown's two-run single. Elliott then retired the next the next three Eagles to limit any further damage.
The junior lefty tied a season low with five strikeouts but held Carson-Newman to just the two runs in 7.0 innings and improved to 8-3. He surrendered eight hits and a walk across an astounding 142 pitches.
LMU couldn't muster much of a scoring threat against Carson-Newman starter Dillon Cate until the fifth inning when
Nate Stinson led off with a double. A wild pitch later advanced him to third, and
Dalton Dedas drove him in with a sac fly to center.
Cate, also a First Team All-SAC selection, allowed four earned runs in five-plus innings to fall to 6-3. He accumulated the second-highest strikeout total in the conference behind Elliott during the regular season but struck out a season-low three on Friday night. The righty held LMU to just three hits and walked two but hit a pair of batters and uncorked two wild pitches.
The Railsplitters sent 10 batters to the plate in the sixth and pushed across six runs on just three hits off four Eagle pitchers to take a commanding 7-2 lead. LMU loaded the bases with no one out on a single and two hit batters to end Cate's outing. After the next two batters struck out swinging, a passed ball allowed the tying run to score.
Joe Stucky later singled in two runs to give the Railsplitters the lead for good. After the team's fifth run came across on a delayed steal,
Seth Hunt capped the scoring with a two-run double.
Lincoln Memorial again loaded the bases with no one out in the seventh and pushed two more runs across on a bases-loaded walk and groundout.
Six different Railsplitters recorded a hit.
Tyler Adams reached base three times on a single and two hit-by-pitches and scored twice to add to his SAC-leading total. Stucky drove in a team-high three runs.
Chris Salvey also scored twice.
Carson-Newman tallied nine hits but went 0-for-10 batting with two outs. Cade Snapp and Tyler Thompson each went 2-for-4 while Brown drove in the team's only two runs.
Lincoln Memorial improves to 3-2 all-time over the Eagles in the SAC championship. The Railsplitters have scored nine runs in all three wins—the other two were in the 2013 and 2017 title matches.
