Baseball completes road trip at Oakwood
The defending regular season conference champion Wiley University baseball team wraps its road swing with a three-game Historically Black Colleges and Universities Athletic Conference (HBCUAC) series at Oakwood University on Friday and Saturday.
The first pitch for Friday's doubleheader is at 1 p.m. Saturday's finale will start at 7:15 p.m. No live coverage will be provided. The series concludes an 11-game road trip that began on March 21.
The Wildcats (22-13, 14-4 HBCUAC) swept Wilberforce to stay tied with Southern University at New Orleans for second in the conference standings. Ivan Del Villar hit two home runs, becoming the second Wildcat since 2007 to hit double-digit home runs in consecutive seasons. Eduardo Fernandez achieved the feat from 2010-12. Jhan Carlos Javier had four runs batted in base hits. Jalen Porter was dominant in the opener, only allowing five hits and struck out 12 batters, which matched his career-high. He earned HBCUAC Pitcher of the Week for his performance and leads the conference with 63 strikeouts. Nick Rodriguez remains tied for the HBCUAC lead with six wins.
Wiley fell 8-6 against Texas A&M University-Texarkana on Tuesday. It led 4-2 in the fourth inning. Del Villar hit an RBI double, Smauri Abram drove in a run with a single and Abel Rodriguez Jr. hit a sacrifice fly to score Javier. The Wildcats gave up four runs on three hits and fell behind. Runs in the fifth and sixth padded Texas A&M-Texarkana's lead.
The Ambassadors (2-24, 2-13 HBCUAC) ended a 38-game losing streak, which began on March 25, 2024, taking the first two games against Philander Smith University. They moved within a half-game of Tougaloo College for eighth. Jordan Jennings leads the team with a .325 batting average and 17 runs. Joshua Mack leads in RBI with 19. Dakota Cobb is the leader on the pitching staff with one win and an 8.94 ERA. He has struck out 12 in 46 1/3 innings. Eli Kennedy leads the team with 15 strikeouts.
This weekend will mark the eighth, ninth and 10th meeting between the Wildcats and Ambassadors. The previous seven games were dominated by Wiley, which won each match by a margin of over ten runs. It scored 20 or more in four games.
For more coverage on the Wildcats visit https://wileyathletics.com/sports/bsb/index
About Wiley University Athletics
Wiley University sponsors 12 varsity sports: women's volleyball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross country, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's indoor track and field, men's and women's outdoor track and field and baseball. It competes in the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Athletic Conference (HBCUAC) and the Continental Athletic Conference for men's and women's soccer.
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