May 8, 2003

Final Stats

Rusty Brown extended his hitting streak to 15 games with a two-run home run in the first inning as No. 11 Florida Atlantic University defeated New York Tech 9-2 in Statesboro, GA on Thursday night. FAU scored all of its runs with two outs as it improved to 40-11, while New York Tech falls to 13-26.

A Matt Pali (Houston, TX) walk and stolen base led to the third run of the game for FAU in the first when Mike Cox connected on an RBI singled up the middle off of NYIT's starter Andrew Karkoulas. Karkoulas finished the game with seven innings and struck out three and allowed four runs. The fourth run came in the fourth inning as he gave up three straight singles to Rob Horst (Gering, NE), Tim Mascia (Wellington, FL) and Mike Murray (Boca Raton, FL). Karakoulas falls to 4-6 this season.

Chris Saxton (Lake Worth, FL) made his third start of the season and worked a solid seven innings and allowed three hits and struck out two. The junior right-hander improves to 4-3 and lowers his ERA to 1.96.

In the ninth inning FAU padded its lead by adding five unearned runs after the Bears committed three costly errors. NYIT narrowed the margin by one in the bottom of the ninth off of reliever Aaron Miller. Miller allowed two hits and walked three to allow the only earned run for the FAU pitching staff.

Cox (Sarasota, FL) and Brown (N. Fort Myers, FL) both led FAU with two RBIs each. Brown finished the night 2-for-5 with a home run.

FAU will play Georgia Southern on Friday evening at 7 pm in Statesboro, GA before facing New York Tech again on Saturday at 1:30 pm.