By Staff
March 11, 2001
By Robby Atkinson
The Meridian Star
The Meridian Community College Eagle baseball team used a masterful pitching performance from Curt McLellan to beat the Chipola (Fla.) Community College Indians on the road Saturday.
McLellan improved his record to 3-2 by striking out five Indian batters and scattering seven hits while walking none in seven innings of work.
MCC broke a scoreless tie by plating all the runs it needed in the fifth inning. Travis Garner, Rory Thorton and Antoin Gray all had doubles in the four-run fifth frame.
MCC ran its record to 13-5 on the season, while dropping the Indians to 23-8. Sam Paulli took the loss, allowing six Eagle hits.
The home team hurt its chances with three errors. MCC will face Chipola again today at 1 p.m.
MCC 14, Three Rivers (CC) 4: The Eagles used timely hitting and strong pitching to take the mercy rule win late Friday night.
The Eagles banged out 15 hits. The big inning for the Eagles was in the fourth, when MCC scored four runs to take an 11-1 lead.
Two of the Meridian runs in the fourth inning of action came off a two-run home run by Dustin Cliburn, his fourth of the year. But Meridian was not done. The Eagles scored three more runs in the sixth inning to secure it. Two of the runs in the frame came off a single by freshman Chad Bradley.
Garner had three singles and Cliburn also added a single.
Adam Smith also collected a pair of singles and Thornton had another. Martin LaRocca got the pitching win to improve to 4-1.
Sportswriter Richard Dark contributed to this report.