BLACKSBURG – Junior Jake Conway hurled four-plus innings of scoreless baseball in a relief effort for Team Stop Bullying – which included retiring the last 11 Team Autism Awareness batters of the game – to help his side to a 4-3 victory in Game 3 of the Virginia Tech baseball Fall World Series.
With the win Team Stop Bullying also took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series with Game 4 slated for 10 a.m. Saturday morning at English Field.
Conway entered the game with one out in the third inning and surrendered back-to-back singles, but settled in the rest of the way. He allowed a leadoff single in the fourth, but did not allow another base runner the rest of the night. He picked up the win in relief, while also striking out four batters.
TSB took a 4-2 lead in the bottom of the second inning thanks to a couple of errors that led to four unearned runs allowed by TAA starter redshirt-sophomore Jon Woodcock.
Freshman Ryan Tufts, redshirt-freshman Saige Jenco and junior Alex Perez all drove in one run in the frame, with Jenco and Perez notching RBI singles.
TAA had taken a 2-0 lead in the top half of the second with two unearned runs of its own, with sophomore Phil Sciretta singling home one and freshman Miguel Ceballos using a sacrifice fly to bring home the second.
Junior Mark Zagunis led off the third with a triple and came home on a sacrifice fly by junior Brendon Hayden, before Conway came in from the pen to relieve TSB starter junior Justin Kelly.
Zagunis and Sciretta each had two hits for TAA, while redshirt-sophomore Logan Bible had the only multi-hit effort for TSB, registering a pair of singles.
Woodcock suffered the loss despite going four innings and not allowing an earned run and also struck out three. Freshman Aaron McGarity threw the final two innings for TAA and allowed just one hit and struck out three as well.
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