May 15, 2008

Box Score

DAYTON, Ohio - Homestanding Dayton saw its hopes of advancing to the Atlantic 10 Baseball Championship come to an end with a 3-1 loss to Duquesne Thursday at Time Warner Cable Stadium. With the loss, UD falls to 29-25 overall and 11-14 in A-10 play heading into Friday's meeting with the Dukes at 3 p.m. ET.

The pitching for both sides was stellar throughout the game as Lucas Farden allowed just three runs on nine hits to suffer the loss. The senior struck out five and walked two in 7.2 innings pitched, but fell to 4-8 on the season.

Chris Beesley came on to throw 1.1 innings of scoreless relief while walking one and striking out another, but it was not enough to overcome the Duquesne duo of Ryan Juran and Danny Brown. Juran allowed just one run on seven hits to earn the win before Brown came on with one runner on base in the ninth inning and retired three straight batters, including two via strikeout, for his eighth save of the season.

Marshall MacDonald led the offense with Dayton's lone RBI of the day. He finished 2-for-4 to join Cole Tyrell as one of just two Flyers to reach base more than once on the afternoon. Tyrell singled and was hit by a pitch to mark the 100th UD batter to be plunked this season. Dayton has now reached the century mark in batters hit by pitch in back-to-back seasons for the first time in program history.

Duquesne got on the board first with a two-out RBI single through the left side in the fifth inning. The Dukes then added two more runs with aggressive base running and back-to-back RBI groundballs through the Flyer infield to build a 3-0 advantage.

UD made a run in the bottom of the eighth as Kevin Miller reached on a bunt single down the third base line. Scott Dunwoody followed with a double over the head of a diving Duquesne outfielder to put runners on second and third with one out. Marshall MacDonald then hit a RBI groundball to short that allowed Miller to score, but Dayton could get no closer in a 3-1 loss.