Wake Forest Athletics
Wake Forest University
Minnesota
Baseball Tops Minnesota, 7-3
2/28/2003 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Feb. 28, 2003
The seventh-ranked Wake Forest baseball team improved to 5-1 on the season with a 7-3 victory over Minnesota on Friday night in the Dairy Queen Classic. The game was played in the Metrodome in Minneapolis.
Kyle Sleeth improved to 3-0 with the win. He pitched eight innings, allowed three runs on seven hits with seven strikeouts and a walk. It was Sleeth's 23rd consecutive victory. Adam Hanson came on and pitched a perfect ninth inning with a strikeout.
After trailing 3-0 after four innings, the Deacons rattled off seven unanswered runs. Leading 4-3, Wake Forest pulled away with three runs in the eighth inning. The Deacons had four straight singles the inning was capped by Jeff Ruziecki's ground run double making it 7-3.
The Deacons took the lead in the sixth inning on Brad Scioletti's two-out, two-run flare into short center field. The ball skimmed off the glove of Minnesota second baseman Luke Appert who attempted to make a difficult over-the-shoulder catch. Instead of catching it for the third out, perserving the Gopher lead, the ball dropped and Wake Forest captured its first lead at 4-3.
Sleeth, the junior from Westminster, Colo., did not allow a hit until the fourth inning. It was a high, turf-aided chopper to third base. By the time the ball came down, Jamie D'Antona had no play. Another high chopper got through the infield and slipped past right fielder Ryan Johnson for an error. The runners moved up a base and then both scored on Scott Welch's double in the right-center gap.
It was the first extra base hit Sleeth allowed this season and it also snapped Sleeth's streak of 17 consecutive innings to start the season without a run. Minnesota finished the innings with three runs to take the game's first lead.
The Deacons came back immediately with two runs in the top of the fifth. After Brad Scioletti walked, Doug Riepe tripled over the left fielder's head to score one. Chris Getz followed with an RBI groundout to pull Wake Forest within a run.
This weekend is a homecoming for Adam Bourassa who grew up in Apple Valley, Minn., just 20 miles south of Minneapolis. Bourassa played in front of some 50 friends and family against the hometown Gophers.
Action at the Dairy Queen Classic in the Metrodome continues on Saturday night when the Deacons take on Nebraska at 7:00 p.m. central time. Senior lefty Seth Hill gets the ball for Wake Forest.
