ITHACA, NY – The Rochester baseball team dropped its first conference game of the season on Saturday, falling to division rival Ithaca College 5-2 at Ithaca's Freeman Field.
The loss moves 22nd-ranked UR's record to 24-6 overall on the year and 11-1 in the Liberty League. Ithaca improves to 21-8 and 9-3 in the conference. Both teams are 6-1 in divisional play and are set to play a doubleheader to complete the weekend series tomorrow at Rochester's Towers Field.
Rochester's offense was limited to just five hits on the day by the Bombers pitchers, Kyle Lambert and Garrett Bell.
Lambert tossed eight innings and scattered the five hits, yielding two runs, two walks while striking out ten. He earned his third win of the season. Bell closed out his second save of the year for Ithaca with a three strikeout ninth inning.
Two of UR's hits came from junior All-American
Aaron Whitley. Whitley finished 2-for-3 with a double, home run and intentional walk. He led off the top of the first with a solo blast to left, his second leadoff bomb of the season.
Ithaca's Buzz Shirley answered Whitley's home run in the bottom of the first, evening the game back up with a solo blast off of UR starter
Nolan Sparks.
Sparks took his first loss of the year, moving to 5-1, allowing four runs over five innings. He walked two and struck out four.
Jason Cobert finished the game on the mound for UR, tossing three innings with three strikeouts while giving up one run.
Rochester regained the lead in the third on a
Joseph Rende sacrifice fly, scoring
Josh Leadem who led off with a walk and moved to third on Whitley's double. Lambert escaped with minimal damage though, getting the sac fly and a strikeout to strand the other UR runner in scoring position.
Ithaca plated the tying run on a bases loaded hit batter in the fourth and grabbed the lead for good in the fifth, scoring two additional runs thanks to a pair of wild pitches from Sparks.
The Yellowjackets could only muster one hit over the final four innings as Ithaca increased its lead in the eighth with a Collin Feeney RBI double to reach the final score of 5-2.
Connor Pedersen and Riley Brawdy paced the Ithaca offense with two hits including a double. Shirley also scored twice for the Bombers.
Tomorrow's doubleheader is slated to begin at 1 pm in Rochester.
