After dropping three games to Louisiana-Lafayette over the weekend, the FAU baseball team couldn’t turn things around Tuesday night, falling 9-5 to Florida Gulf Coast for the program’s fourth straight loss.
With heavy thunder storms pounding the Boca Raton area all afternoon, the team was forced into an unusual warm-up scenario, in which head coach John McCormack felt his squad was caught off guard.
“I don’t know what to say,” McCormack said. “I’m speechless in terms of the way we went about [the game]. I don’t know if it was the rain and having to put the tarp on the field and then having to take it off.”
Along with the weather conditions, FAU was also starting pitcher Glen Troyanowski for the first time since his recovery from last year’s labrum surgery. Troyanowski was designated a certain number of pitches in hopes of gearing him up for conference play later in the season.
“We started Glen [Troyanowski] and everybody knows it was kind of like a rehab assignment,” said McCormack. “I don’t want to say he wasn’t pitching to win the game, but he was pitching to get his work in. Sometimes those things have the tendency to take the game from an actual game to like an inner-squad [scrimmage].”
A scrimmage or spring-training type of atmosphere between FAU and Florida Gulf Coast was more of the feeling around the dugouts as play got underway, rather than a midseason weeknight matchup between the state schools.
Troyanowski was able to get the first three outs of the contest without any problems, but once he worked his way into the second inning, an error by left fielder Alex Hudak allowed a run to score, and the early mistake set the tempo.
In the third inning, the Eagles tallied three more runs off a trio of hits including a two-run home run from first baseman Zach Maxfield, and the lead grew to 4-0.
The Owls were able to string some offense of their own together in the bottom of the third inning when Nathan Pittman hit an RBI single up the middle to give the home team its first run of the game. Nick DelGuidice and Hudak followed up the score with two plate appearances that produced runs, and FAU trailed 4-3 heading into the fourth.
FGCU added two more runs in the next inning, bringing its lead to 7-3, and it appeared that the Owls, who had managed only four hits and had left the bases loaded the last inning, weren’t going to be in a position to pull out the game.
However, Hudak answered the call, knocking a two-run home run off the foul pole in right field, cutting the lead to two runs.
Any hope of an FAU rally was quickly put to sleep, when the Eagles added two more runs in the sixth inning and brought the score to the final of 9-5.
“We don’t have the ability to string six or seven good at-bats together,” McCormack said.
Troyanowski was handed his first loss of the season after pitching 1.2 innings, giving up two hits and one unearned run. In relief, lefty Josh Gonzaga put in two scoreless innings of work while surrendering no hits.
Hudak paved the way offensively, tallying three RBIs and hitting the team’s first home run in six games.
FAU fell to 1-5 all-time against Florida Gulf Coast, and 1-4 on Tuesday night games this season.
“I think what hurts the most right now is how talented we are as a team, and when you have high expectations like we do, any loss is gut-wrenching inside,” Hudak said.
The Owls will travel to South Alabama this weekend looking to snap a season-long four-game losing streak and secure the squad’s first road win of the year.
