Army Clinches Road Series Sweep at Lafayette

EASTON, Pa. – Army West Point baseball finished its weekend in style on Sunday, defeating the Lafayette Leopards 10-5 and securing a three-game series sweep over its Patriot League foe at Kamine Stadium.

The Black Knights (11-10, 4-2) move back above .500 overall for the second time this year, and have won four consecutive games as well as five of its past six.

For Army, five-run fifth and eighth innings were the answer to the test, scoring at least 10 runs in four straight games.

Sunday’s contest took the form of a pitching dual until the top of the fifth however, with starting pitcher Trey Ates keeping the Leopards off the board in each of his four innings pitched. He escaped a first inning jam by stranding a pair of runners in scoring position, before settling in to record a perfect third frame.

Robbie Penswick pitched 3.2 innings in relief and moved to 2-4 with the win, before passing the ball to Josiah Overbeek who recorded the final four outs.

Army’s five-run flurry in the fifth came after outs in the inning’s first two at bats. But after a fielding error kept the inning alive, Chris Barr drove in the first runs of the game before coming around to cross the plate himself on an E2 off the bat of Thomas Schreck. Carter Hewitt joined the RBI party on the next at bat to make it 5-0.

In the eighth inning, with Army holding into a 5-1 lead, RBI singles from Barr and Addison Ainsworth made it 7-1, before three more runs came around on doubles from Parker and Hewitt for the Black Knights to extend their cushion to nine runs.

Army’s bullpen kept the Leopards at bay throughout the contest, with Penswick stranding the bases loaded in the sixth on a two-out, full count strikeout. Then in the seventh, the junior reliever worked around a trio of baserunners to limit the damage to just one run.

Lafayette plated four in the bottom of the ninth, including three on a three-run home run, but would run out of outs on the ensuing at bat.