Box score (game 1)

Box score (game 2)

HOUSTON—NJIT and Houston Baptist split their Great West Conference baseball doubleheader Saturday afternoon, with the Huskies taking the seven-inning first game, 6-1, and the Highlanders bouncing back for a 13-1 win in the nightcap, shortened to eight innings by the conference 10-run mercy rule.
 
Saturday's split left both teams with 5-2 conference records, while NJIT is 12-14 overall and Houston Baptist is 13-18. With NJIT having won Friday's series opener, 9-1, the Highlanders will look to take the series on Sunday in a single game scheduled for 1 pm (CDT). HBU, which swept its conference-opening series from Chicago State last weekend, will aim for a series split this weekend when it hosts the Highlanders in the finale of the four-game set.
 
Houston Baptist led the first game 2-1 when it broke out for four runs in the bottom of the sixth inning in a frame that included two hits, a walk, two NJIT wild pitches, a passed ball and three Highlander errors.
 
Freshman RHP Ross Kennell (3-2) started and got the win with 5.1 innings work, scattering six hits and allowing the one NJIT run, with five strikeouts and a walk. Junior Jake Gonzalez, who started the game in center field, took the mound with a one-run lead and one out in the sixth inning and was credited with his second save of the season with 1.2 innings of scoreless one-hit pitching. He struck out two and walked one.
 
For NJIT, junior RHP DJ Roche (3-3) started and went 5.2 innings, allowing just four hits, but six runs (one earned) and five walks with six strikeouts. He also threw three wild pitches and hit a batter. Sophomore RHP Matt Coughlin got the final out in the fateful sixth inning, working around NJIT's third error of the inning and fourth of the game.
 
Needing a bounce back effort in the nightcap, the Highlanders responded in a big way, pounding out 16 hits and 13 runs against four HBU pitchers, while junior LHP Tripp Davis (3-1) was tossing a complete-game, eight-inning, two-hitter, with seven strikeouts and three walks.
 
While things did not go well on the mound for Roche in Game One, he had a stellar day at the plate in both ends of the doubleheader, going 3-for-3, including a double, in the opener and 4-for-5 in the second game for a 7-for-8 day.
 
HBU, which had four hits in the opener, got them from four different players. Gonzalez hit a two-out, two-run triple in the bottom of the fourth inning to give the Huskies a 2-1 lead and pinch hitter Samm Wiggins doubled to lead off the bottom of the sixth inning, triggering the four-run Houston Baptist uprising.
 
Roche's double in the sixth inning was the only extra-base hit for the Highlanders in the opener and his single in fourth inning sent home his team's only run of the contest.
 
In Game Two, every Highlander batter but one got at least one hit, with Roche's 4-for-5 leading the way. Sophomore SS Matt Weckerle was 3-for-4 with two runs batted in, while freshman CF Ed Charlton, senior C Bryan Bleakley, and junior 3B Jeff Peterson all went 2-for-4.
 
Charlton drove in four runs, while Bleakley drove in three with a three-run round trip shot in the top of the eighth inning. The homer was Bleakley's team-leading fourth of the season and he now has 23 RBI, which also tops the Highlanders, two ahead of James D'Aloia (21) and three ahead of Weckerle (20).
 
Houston Baptist's two hits in the nightcap both came from junior 2B Josh Foust, who singled leading off the bottom of the first inning and then tripled to drive in the lone Husky run in the fifth inning.
 
With his lockdown two-hit, one-run effort at HBU, NJIT's Davis lowered his opponents' season batting average to .209 in 55.1 innings. His earned run average of 3.58 in eight games is tops among the Highlander starting pitchers.
 
Both games in the doubleheader were close in the early going, with the winning team pulling ahead late. In the opener, NJIT broke a scoreless tie with a run in the top of the fourth inning and Houston Baptist seized the lead in the bottom half on a pair of runs. The Huskies finally put the game out of reach with their four-run sixth inning en route to the 6-1 win.
 
In the second game, the Highlanders scored a pair of runs in the opening inning and added another in the third, before Houston Baptist got its run in the bottom of the fifth, trimming the deficit to 3-1. The score stayed that way through six full innings, but NJIT added four runs in the seventh for a 7-1 lead and then six in the eighth to go ahead by 12 runs, with Davis retiring HBU 1-2-3 in the bottom of the eighth to nail down the mercy rule-shortened victory.
 
NJIT got its run in the opening game when Weckerle led off the fourth inning with a single, stole second, moved to third on a ground out and scored on Roche's one-out single.
 
HBU's two go-ahead runs in the bottom of the frame were unearned, as Wiggins walked to lead off and 1B Bradley Brown reached base on an error ahead of the two-out triple to right center field by Gonzalez.
 
Kennell kept NJIT off the board in the fifth and he got the first out of the sixth inning before Roche doubled, putting the potential tying run on second base. That brought Gonzalez in from center field to take over the pitching duties and he got back-to-back fly outs to stifle the Highlander rally.
 
Having survived the NJIT half of the sixth inning with their 2-1 lead intact, the Huskies poured four runs across the plate in the bottom half. Wiggins led off with a double and after an out, Brown walked. SS Curtis Jones followed with a run-scoring single and then the wheels came off for Roche and the Highlanders. First came a wild pitch, then a swinging strikeout of Gonzalez that didn't become an out because of a throwing error following strike three, as another run scored on the play. Then came a passed ball, allowing another run to cross and, finally, the fourth run came home on a wild pitch. Coughlin entered for Roche after that and, after an error, he got a popup to end the inning.
 
Gonzalez, looking for the save, struck out the first two NJIT batters in the seventh before allowing a single and walk and then closing the game with a foul out.
 
Having been victimized by their own sloppy half-inning in the field near the end of game one, the Highlanders took advantage of three first-inning Houston Baptist errors for a pair of runs to begin the second game. Charlton got an RBI on a fielder's choice in the frame.
 
NJIT's third-inning run came when 2B Mike Rampone hit a leadoff single, moved up one base on a sacrifice bunt by Weckerle, to third on a fly out, and then scored on Roche's two-out single.
 
HBU's lone tally of the game came in the fifth inning when Foust tripled with two outs, chasing home 3B Josh Martinez, who walked with one out.
 
The Highlanders added on four more scores in the seventh, with the runs crossing on a two-run double to left center field by Weckerle, a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch for Charlton and a no-outs, bases-loaded double play ground out.
 
The six-run NJIT top of the eighth included the three-run homer by Bleakley, a two-run single for Charlton and an RBI single for Roche.