Creighton University
Arkansas
Baseball Season Ends With 6-0 Loss To Arkansas
6/3/2007 8:00:00 AM | Baseball
Top-seeded
Creighton had its best scoring chance against Schmidt in the bottom of the fifth. Michael Lam walked with one out and moved to second when Robbie Knight was hit by pitch. Ross Sinclair struck out looking before Chris Gradoville's deep drive to the left-field warning track was hauled in by a leaping Casey Coon.
Ambidextrous reliever Pat Venditte came on to open the seventh. The first batter he faced, Walker, hit a long home run beyond the right-field bullpen. One out later, Jake Dugger lofted a high fly ball to left that was dropped by Andrew Small, enabling Dugger to cruise all the way to third. Dugger then scored on a perfectly-executed suicide squeeze bunt from Jones.
Making his first start since being named Third-Team All-American by Collegiate Baseball, Mancuso threw well despite taking the loss (10-3). He threw six innings and gave up five hits, two runs, one walk and struck out six in 80 pitches.
Creighton had just two hits against Schmidt. Small hit a one-out blooper down the right-field line in the second inning, while Ruf punched a single through the left-side to open the sixth inning. Sinclair and Chad Ogden also managed base hits against Hill in the final two frames.
Incredibly, Creighton managed just three ground balls in the entire game, two of which were bunt attempts. CU also had 17 fly outs (including a double-play) and six strikeouts.
NOTES: Robbie Knight was hit by his NCAA-record 34th pitch of the season in the first inning, then hit for the 35th time in the fifth inning. It was the 11th time this year he's been hit to lead off a game and seventh time he's been hit multiple times in the same game ...Andrew Small's HBP in the ninth inning was the 116th of the season for Creighton, sixth in NCAA single-season history ...Robbie Knight followed Michael Lam's third-inning hit-by-pitch with Creighton's 93rd sacrifice bunt of the season, a figure that is sixth in NCAA history and tops in the MVC record books ...Pat Venditte made his 38th appearance of the season, breaking the school record he shared with Scott Reese (2005) and tying the all-time MVC record previously set by Jim Newlin (Wichita State, 1989) ...Brian Walker's two homers was the third multiple-homer game of the Arkansas catcher's career. It was also his second career four-hit game ...Brian Walker had had owned just two hits in his last 20 at-bats before today ...Pat Venditte ended the season with a 1.88 ERA, the best mark ever by a Bluejay with a minimum of 50 innings pitched ...Pat Venditte's 2.61 career ERA is also the top career mark in CU history ...Attendance at the game was 6,848 ...Creighton tied a season-high with four errors ...Creighton had turned a double play in 18 straight games before having none today ...Creighton had won 10 straight true road games, the nation's longest such streaking entering Sunday play ...CU was 0-for-13 with runners on base ...Creighton has now been shutout to end its season in four of the last six years ...Andy Masten had not allowed a ninth-inning run all year (25.2 IP) before giving up two tallies today ...The contest was the final for eight Bluejay seniors on the postseason roster: Chris Gradoville, Marc Lewis, Chris Marchildon, Andy Masten, Chad Ogden, Scott Reese, Ross Sinclair and Andrew Small.
