Weekly Recap - April 19 - 26

As you may already know, this past Sunday all of the CSU student-athletes gathered together for one final time this year to honor the best of the best. Each team honored their seniors and letter winners, as well as a team MVP and sportsmanship award winner.

More firsts, we did our first live twitter feed of baseball this weekend. Hopefully next year we will be able to do some live blogs of sporting events as well, but if you are on Twitter, you can add us http://twitter.com/csusports and get live updates on your computer or even your phone.

Tyler Thornburg is this week’s CSU Athlete of the Week after pounding seven hits, six for extra bases in five games. He also tied a couple of records that we will mention later.

Men’s golf finished up their championships last week, while Baseball and Softball continued to grind away in their last week of competition before the dreaded FINALS week!

On that topic, we do want to wish all of our student-athletes GOOD LUCK on their finals!

What happened this week:

April 20 – 22 - M Golf @ Big South Championships
Herve Gevers shot the second-best round of the entire tournament on the final day of competition, moving him up 13 spots into a tie for sixth individually for CSU. The Bucs finished tied for sixth as a team, despite recording one eagle, 26 birdies and 128 pars over the three-day tournament.

April 21 – Baseball @ Georgia Southern – L / 12-1
CSU knew they were up for a challenge, facing the 27th-ranked team in the country in a midweek contest. The Bucs did their part, stealing some momentum early with an RBI double in the first by Tyler Thornburg, who had himself a week! (You’ll read about that later in the blog). The one run would prove to be all CSU would get and the powerful Eagles did what the SoCon has done all year, pounded the ball, getting 12 runs on 11 hits.

April 22 – Baseball @ Furman – L / 6-5
No rest for the Bucs as they passed through Charleston and continued north to face Furman in another non-conference matchup. Tyler Thornburg tied the CSU records for extra-base hits in a game and homeruns in a game, while breaking the record for total bases in a game. Thornburg had knocked in four of the five CSU runs, while Bentley Christmas got his first career-RBI to account for the other run.

April 22 – Softball vs. C of C (DH) – W / 7-3, L / 2-0
Game one of the double header was much like the two games played at Patriots Point earlier this year as CSU brought out the heavy lumber, scoring five runs in the first two innings. The offensive pace slowed until the sixth inning when they added two more to take the 7-3 victory. Jamie Wellons got the win in the circle, while CSU spread out their eight hits between seven different players, Megan Hall being the only one to record multiple hits.

Apparently CSU left all of their offense in game one, though, as they got shut out in game two, leaving the season series tied at 2-2. Wellons and Melissa Adams were the only two that were able to manage a hit, and while Sondra Vetter tried to hold down the Cougars, a run in each of the fifth and sixth innings proved too much.

April 24-25 – Softball vs. Radford – L / 6-1, L / 10-4, L / 5-2
Despite dropping some tough games to Big South regular-season champions Radford, freshman Megan Lombard provided a very bright spot. Lombard hit a sizzling .556 for CSU with two runs scored and one homerun. Megan Hall also shined as she had three hits and scored three times. Sondra Vetter went 7.2 innings in the circle, giving up just 10 hits and four runs, while striking out six Radford hitters. After the long layoff, CSU will go straight to the Big South Conference Championship, hosted by Radford on May 7-10.

April 24-25 – Baseball vs. Radford – L / 13-7, W / 7-2, W / 6-1
After the defense suffered in game one, committing six errors, CSU realized that they could play with Radford if they didn’t help the other team out. The Bucs cut down on the errors and went on to win games two and three in commanding fashion. The CSU pitching staff and defense held the Highlanders, who are averaging more than seven runs a game to just three combined runs in the final two games, both wins for the Bucs. Charlie McCready got one victory, pitching 5.1 innings and giving up no earned runs, while Jesse Cadenhead got the victory in game two, narrowly missing his second complete game of the season. He went 8.1 innings before Thornburg shut the door, getting the final two outs.

What’s coming up:
Tuesday, April 28 – Reading Day
Wednesday, April 29 – Tuesday, May 5 – Final Exams