Mountain Cats Split WVIAC Twinbill With Shepherd

03/27/2009

Drew Westover's (Flinton, Pa.) two-run homerun in the bottom of the sixth inning broke a scoreless tie and led the Mountain Cat baseball team to a 2-0 victory over Shepherd (WV) University in game one of a WVIAC Northern Division doubleheader at Johnstown's Point Stadium, Friday evening. In game two, Shepherd earned a 4-1 win to drop Pitt-Johnstown to 20-6 overall and 3-3 in conference play.
Westover drove his second homer of the season over the left field screen with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning and scored Nick Barbera (Harrisburg, Pa.) to lead Pitt-Johnstown to the 2-0 win.
Barbera, Matt Hanley (Delmont, Pa.) and Justin Demek (Cabot, Pa.) also collected hits for the Mountain Cats.
Kaleb Fleck (Claysburg, Pa.) tossed a complete-game shutout to improve to 4-1. Fleck scattered six hits, walked one and struck out eight. Matt McCarty allowed just the three hits and fanned eight in six innings for Shepherd, but took the loss and fell to 4-3.
In the nightcap, the Rams jumped out to a 1-0 first inning lead, but Pitt-Johnstown quickly answered to tie it in the bottom of the frame. Barbera led off with a triple and scored on Matt Staub's (Latrobe, Pa.) ground out. However, that was the last of the Mountain Cat scoring. Shepherd broke the 1-1 tie on Brian Collins' three-run homerun to left center in to fifth inning and went on to the 4-1 win.
Demek went 2-for-3 to lead Pitt-Johnstown. Along with Barbera's triple, Westover and Dan Mangini (Lower Burrell, Pa.) added singles for the Mountain Cats.
Senior right-hander Ben Watkins (Johnstown, Pa.) suffered his first loss of the year and fell to 3-1. Watkins gave four runs (3 earned runs) on 10 hits in 5.1 innings-pitched. Watkins also didn't allow a walk and struck out six. Pat Smith improved to 6-0 for the the Rams with the complete-game. Smith gave up five hits and one run.
Shepherd is now 13-11 overall and 3-1 in the WVIAC North.
The Mountain Cats will wrap-up the WVIAC series against Shepherd (WV) University on Saturday with a doubleheader at 1 p.m. at the Point Stadium.

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