March 3, 2007

Box Score

The George Mason baseball team got its pitching back up to par and some early offense made certain the strong effort would be more than enough as Mason defeated William & Mary 11-5 on Saturday at Spuhler Field. The win was the first Colonial Athletic Association victory of the year for Mason. Starter J.J. Pannell earned his second win of the season while Mason head coach Bill Brown picked up the 699th win of his career.

The Patriots (3-5), 1-1 will try to earn Brown his 700th win tomorrow when they take on the Tribe (6-7, 1-1) at 1 p.m. in the rubber match of the three-game series. Mason has not dropped the season series to William & Mary since 2002.

The win by Mason snapped a five-game William & Mary winning streak and most of the credit goes to Pannell, who limited the Tribe to five runs on 11 hits with almost all of the runs coming in the eighth and ninth innings. Pannell took a shutout into the eighth before finally giving up runs as he gave almost the entire bullpen the day off. Trevor Rosenberg got the final out, striking out Brent McWhorter to end the game.

Six players had multiple hits with freshman catcher Chris Henderson leading the way going 4 for 4. Ryan Uphouse was 3 for 5 with three RBI while Chris Fournier (2 for 5) and Scott Krieger (3 for 5) each homered. Jason Bour was 3 for 4 and raised his season batting average to .483.

The Patriots struck for five runs in the first and four in the second. The first-inning runs came with two outs and no one on. Krieger singled to center and scored on a Justin Bour double. Jason Bour followed with an RBI single and Henderson had his first hit to put two runners on. Uphouse. Mike Laird and Dan Palumbo followed with RBI singles before Brent Weiss grounded into a fielder's choice to end the inning.

In the second, Fournier and Krieger led off with back-to-back homers and after Justin Bour grounded out, Jason Bour was hit by a pitch. Henderson and Uphouse followed with back-to-back doubles to make it 9-0. Mason added a run in the sixth when Jason Bour doubled and scored on a Henderson single. In the seventh, Fournier doubled with one out, went to third on a ground out and scored on a Justin Bour single.

Pannell got in trouble in the eighth as two of William & Mary's runs scored on sacrifice flies. Greg Sexton, who was 2 for 3, added an RBI double. In the ninth, the Tribe got another sacrifice fly after back-to-back singles. Kevin Landry started for the Tribe, lasting one and one-third innings and allowing nine earned runs. He fell to 1-2 on the year.