URI baseball sweeps past St. Joseph's

04/29/09 - The first-place Rams won their ninth, 10th and 11th consecutive games against A-10 opponent Saint Josephs University this past weekend.This win signified the teams 18th road game of the season Sunday, defeating the Hawks 6-1. The win followed a 14-7 win from Saturday and a 16-8 win from Friday. The 36 runs were the most scored by the Rams in any three-game stretch this season.

"We've been getting contributions from everybody," head coach Jim Foster said. "When a few guys are struggling, it seems like a couple of the other guys pick it up."

In Friday's 16-8 slugfest victory, every Rhode Island starter contributed at least one base hit, en route to a total of 21 hits for the game.

"[Balance] is important," Foster said. "You need a good, balanced lineup if you want to be any good. You need key guys that are going to be tough outs up and down the lineup. Guys who will take a walk and guys who will be good two strike hitters."

Sophomore Tom Coulombe and junior Zoey Angulo led the Rams offensively in game one, compiling four hits apiece. Coulombe recorded four more hits during the next two games, leading the Rams in the weekend series with eight hits in 13 at-bats, while driving in two runs and scoring six runs.

"It's not about hitting 15, 20 homeruns and driving in 50, 60 runs," Foster said. "It's just about being good situational hitters and being able to advance base runners and handle the bat and that sort of thing."

After needing six innings of relief in game one, junior Nick Greenwood gave his bullpen a rest in the second game, throwing six quality innings, allowing just three earned runs. Greenwood had four strikeouts while only surrendering one walk.

While the bullpen struggled in relief of Greenwood, the offense was enough to carry Rhode Island to its 11th win in its last 12 games, scoring 14 runs behind Mike Lebel's four hits, two runs and three runs batted in.

"Greenwood threw a pretty good game on Saturday," Foster said, "and if you saw the place we played at this weekend, it's a very difficult place to play defense. There were pretty tough conditions but the offense really picked us up."

After giving up 15 runs in the first two games, Rhode Island got its best pitching performance from its ace, junior Eric Smith, on Sunday afternoon. Smith, who leads his team with a 2.72 earned run average and a .203 opponent's batting average, went six innings while allowing just one unearned run on four hits. He struck out seven Hawk hitters while only walking three.

The Rams leaned on their lone senior starter, Dan Rhault, for some offensive production in Sunday's 6-1 win and he responded with three hits, including a double and a homerun.

"Dan Rhault has given us a lot offensively," Foster said. "He's having a great season and it shows a lot about his leadership."

With the sweep, the Rams improved their record to 29-13-1 while pushing their lead in the A-10 Conference to one-and-a-half games ahead of second place Dayton University. The Rams look to stay hot when they travel to Siena College today. First pitch is set for 4 p.m.

"They're always very competitive," Foster said of Siena. "They have some pretty good talent up there. We like to separate each week and last week was a good week so we're just looking to do a good job this week to keep it going.