Liberty : 1-3

Home: 0-0

Away: 1-3

Q1: 0-3

Q2:

Q3:

Q4: 1-0

RPI : 16

Liberty picked up a much needed 8 to 6 road midweek win over the Duke Blue Devils of the ACC.  The Flames came off a weekend that the bats were silenced for virtually the entire weekend by the 18th ranked Southern Miss Golden Eagles in which they scored just 3 runs in 3 games.  There's something about the Blue Devils that seems to wake up the Liberty bats over the last few years and Wednesday would prove that theory to be true again.  Cam Troyer paced the offensive attack with a clutch 2 out 3 run homer that was part of a 5 run 2 out rally in the in the 3rd.  Lazzaro and Betts went back to back as well in the game in almost the same spot in the outfield.  Pitching wise, Gainey would get the start and turned in a gritty 4 1/3 innings that allowed 3 ER and struck out 5 while throwing 62 pitches.  The Flames would turn to true freshman Todd Hudson for 2 scoreless innings with 3 strikeouts in the 6th and 7th to set the table for the late inning action.  Trey Carter came on in the 8th and struggled with his command while issuing 3 walks.  Coach Jackson would turn to Cole Hertzler to come on for a 4 out save opportunity which would be the first of his career.  Hertzler would get out of the jam and start the 9th off with a big strikeout before a Cam Foster error at 3b opened up trouble for the Flames.  With 2 outs, Hertzler fielded a ball back to him and it looked he had thrown it away which would have allowed Duke to cut it to 1.  The Flames coaching staff challenged the ruling and it was ruled that the runner was out of the baseline and the game was over.  Duke Coach Pollard lost his mind and would have surely been ejected had the game still been going on.  Troyer, Hillier, Foster & Betts all had 2 hits each for the Flames as they were able to fire up the offense early and often.  Duke came in the game at 2-1 after taking a home series against St Josephs to start the season.  Southern Miss clobbered New Orleans in their midweek game 12-0 yesterday as well.  Southern Miss is sitting at #4 in the way too early look at the RPI.  

This weekend the Flames will head down to Rock Hill South Carolina to return the series from last year against Winthrop that saw the Flames get the sweep.  Winthrop swept Long Island in their first weekend series before being destroyed by South Carolina 19-3 yesterday in their midweek matchup.  2 of Winthrop's players off last year's roster will be suiting up for the Flames this time in pitcher Garret Gainey and 1B Andrew Jenner.  Winthrop was picked to finish 9th out of the 10 team Big South Conference in the pre-season poll.  Winthrop finished last year at 18-34 overall but were 14-16 at home.  They scored a total of 4 runs in the games against the Flames.  The Flames should expect to win the series but sweeping is always difficult and WU has always played fairly solid at home.  The ballpark has the famous late afternoon sun that would cause 20 to 30 minute delays in the Big South Championship days when they hosted at that park.  

Nothing official yet but I would expect to see the same 3 starters from the Southern Miss series.  As noted earlier, the Flames could use 15 to 16 pitchers this year once Beamon is fully healthy which is expected soon.  Lineup wise, Liberty is still trying to find a spark at 2B between the trio of Simmons, Keeter & Edmands.  Jenner has come out of the gate slow as well but a return to his old home park at WU could create a spark.  Castillo and Troyer have staked a pretty good claim to regular AB's as newcomers.  Troyer has hit 2 homers already and Castillo has swung the bat pretty well thus far.  It will continue to be a work in progress the next couple of weeks as the staff continues to figure out who will slot into what role exactly.  The next 7 games are all very winnable and the Flames will hope to come out no worse than 5 and 2 and probably more like 6 and 1 to get them pointed in the right direction before a very difficult stretch that will see them face VCU, ECU & FGCU, Wake & ODU in a brutal 9 game stretch over 2 weeks.