CSR (Baseball Shut Out in NCAA III Tourney Opener by Rose-Hulman)

CALVIN SPORTS REPORT FOR WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 2008

Baseball Shutout in NCAA III Tournament Opener By Rose-Hulman)

BASEBALL
Rose-Hulman 4, Calvin 0
(written by Colin McWhertor '08)

Terre Haute, IN – In its first NCAA appearance since 2002, the Calvin
College baseball team was the victim of a superb pitching performance and
dropped a 4-0 decision to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

In an odd situation, Calvin was the home team in a game against the host
school. The game was played at Rose-Hulman’s beautiful Art Nehf Field. The
game ended being played under the lights of the ball field, the first time
Calvin has played under the lights all season.

The Knights could muster only three hits against the Fighting Engineers’
starting pitcher Derek Eitel, who went the distance for the shut-out while
striking out a whopping 13 Calvin batters. Eitel (9-3) used superb movement
and a good fastball to keep the Knights off-balance all night, putting an
exclamation on his outing by striking out the final two batters with the bases
loaded to preserve the shut-out.

“Eitel did a really nice job,” said Calvin head coach John Sparks. “He
had nice pace on his fastball and a pretty nice slider. In the early innings
we had trouble laying off the slider and later in the game we laid off of it
and we got a few base runners, but give him credit, he made the pitches when he
needed to.”

Calvin’s starting pitcher, junior Nate Pocock (Wayland, MA), struggled to
match Eitel an could not get out of the fifth inning after allowing four runs
on seven hits. Rose-Hulman’s second baseman Michael Matsui did all the
damage against Pocock, collecting two-run singles in both the fourth and fifth
innings. Pocock falls to 8-2 on the season.

The Knights bullpen kept them in the game down the stretch when freshman Adam
VanOpstal (Calvin Christian) and senior Todd LaForest (Clio) combined for 4.1
scoreless innings on the mound.

Coach Sparks was still upbeat about his team’s first NCAA appearance in six
years despite the loss.

“We’re really excited to be here,” he said, “I think we actually
played a really solid game tonight despite out plate appearances. We struggled
offensively, which has been a strength of ours all season so we’ll try to
come out tomorrow and see what we can do.”

Calvin’s opponent Thursday will be Heidelberg University, the top seed in
the Mideast Region, who defeated Transylvania easily on Wednesday by a score of
10-3. The Knights must win to avoid elimination from the NCAA Tournament.

“Heidelberg is a really solid baseball team obviously,” said Sparks about
his team’s next opponent, “they’ve been ranked in the top 15 all year and
they put a lot of pressure on you offensively and they like to run, so we’ll
have to play our best against them.”

Junior Kyle Cousins will start Thursday’s game for Calvin, who will still be
looking for it’s first ever NCAA Tournament victory. The Knights are now 0-7
all time in NCAA play. The game Thursday will start at 3:30pm.

Jeff Febus
Sports Information Director
Calvin College
(616) 526-6169 Office
(616) 526-8551 Fax
Received on Wed May 14 23:49:05 2008