Sophomore Ryan Lukah steps to the plate as Hartford hasn’t been able to get the ball rolling as of yet. Courtesy of Steve McLaughlin.
After finishing last season with a 16-40 overall record and 7-17 in conference, the University of Hartford baseball team looked to start off their season hot by taking home a few wins down south this past weekend.
The Hawks took on Campbell in North Carolina then James Madison in Virg., playing each team four times.
Unfortunately it looks like the men left off where they finished last year, losing all eight games by a large margin.
The Hawks lost to Campbell and James Madison by a total of 46-7, and 39-16, respectively in their series.
The team definitely had their worst games against Campbell, where the team had two games where they finished with batting averages of .148 and .103 and finished with five and a half hits per game.
Overall the team is batting .213 with 52 hits. The Hawks also only attained one homerun over the course of their first eight games.
However Trey Stover has provided some light for Hartford, finishing the weekend with .385 batting average and went 10 for 26 with six runs scored and two rbi’s.
Pitching also needs to be worked on for Hartford, where they finished the weekend with an atrocious 9.91 era due to the poor efforts out of Ryan Carter, Ryan Lukah and Alex Goulin. The players finished with a 18, 21.24, and 22.50 era’s respectively. And opponents batting average against the Hawks is .341 and they have allowed 92 hits.
There was a bright spot in this poor showing this weekend. In their final game against James Madison the Hawks had their closest game only losing by two runs in 11 innings with a final score of 11-9.
Relief pitchers Brian Murphy and Jeremy Charles were able to hold JMU scoreless for five innings, during which, Hartford added an additional run in the fifth.
Back-to-back hits from Stover and Brady Sheetz, the second a double which put both runners in scoring position, opened the inning before an infield groundout from James Alfonso secured the single run.
Luckily for Hartford, these games happened early on in the season and gives the coaching staff and players some time to fix the mistakes that were made in these first eight games and can make improvements for the future.
The Hawks will look to scoop up their first win when they travel to Troy, Alabama this weekend to play Troy and Southeast Louisiana in two games a piece.