Owls Even Weekend Set At VCU With 5-1 Win Behind Peterson's Third-Straight Quality Start

Saturday, April 13

Richmond, VA

3:00 p.m.

Temple University

13-17, 4-7

VCU

16-16, 4-6

Temple

VCU

Photo by: Mitchell Leff

Owls Even Weekend Set At VCU With 5-1 Win Behind Peterson's Third-Straight Quality Start

4.13.13 | Baseball

Box Score

RICHMOND, Va. – Temple evened its weekend Atlantic 10 Conference set with Virginia Commonwealth on Saturday afternoon at The Diamond, winning by a score of 5-1 behind its right-handed ace sophomore Eric Peterson.

Peterson, who was coming off several Pitcher of the Week honors, including the national award from College Baseball Insider, improved to 5-0 on the year and lowered his ERA to 1.82 on the season. The Bear, Del. native was in search of his third straight complete game, but left after throwing 122 pitches through 7.0 solid innings of work. Peterson did not allow the Rams to score until there were two outs in the sixth when Taylor Buran lifted a sacrifice fly to bring James Bunn home from third. The VCU sixth-inning tally was the first run scored on Peterson in 19 innings. Prior to that, the Owls' righty surrendered just one run in his previous 23. For Saturday's game, he served up four hits and struck out seven batters.

Unlike what it did for Friday night's starter Patrick Peterson, Temple's offense got going quickly and provided run support for the other Peterson twin. The Owls' scored a pair of runs in each of the first two innings, giving him a commanding 4-0 lead to work with, which was not cut into until the sixth inning.

With the first two batters put away, senior Henry Knabe and junior Derek Peterson were issued free passes on balls before redshirt senior Matt Elko loaded the bases when he reached base on an error.

Alarmed by what the Owls had going on the basepaths, VCU starter Ryan Farrar and catcher Nick Octavi proved to be distracted. A passed ball committed by Octavi allowed Knabe to come home and open the scoring and after freshman Andrew Nist walked to reload the bases, Farrar lost control of his delivery and hurled a wild pitch that allowed Peterson to increase the lead to two runs.

When they came back to the dish, freshman Jimmy Kerrigan got the second inning rally started with bse hit into center field. He later scored on sophomore Nick Lustrino's RBI double. Temple ran its lead up to a four-run advantage in the ensuing at-bat when Knabe drilled a two-out pitch into right field for two bases to send Lustrino all the way around.

Lustrino, who recorded his third consecutive multi-hit game with a 2-for-4 day, drove in another run in the ninth inning when he lifted a sac fly to score Kerrigan.

Redshirt senior Steve Visnic took over for Eric Peterson in the eighth and looked sharp, as he nailed down a quick 1,2,3 inning on five pitches, while redshirt junior Ryan Kuehn also threw a scoreless inning of work in the ninth.

Temple, now 13-17 overall and 4-7 in A-10 play, will go for its first series win of the season when it closes out the weekend series with the VCU Rams (17-17, 4-6 A-10) at The Diamond on Sunday beginning at 1:00 p.m.