It’s hard to have a more memorable individual performance as a college baseball player than hitting for the cycle in the stadium built to host champions of the past and present ever summer, but if it’s possible, then Creighton junior second baseman Ryan Fitzgerald might have pulled it off on Thursday night. With his team trailing Seton Hall, 4-3, and eight outs away from falling into a win-or-go home game against Georgetown, Fitzgerald smacked a two-run, bases loaded double to key a four-run seventh inning rally and lead the Bluejays (31-17) to a 7-4 win over the Pirates on Thursday night at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha.
Fitzgerald, who hit for the cycle in last Thursday’s win over Villanova, went 2-for-4 on the night with two doubles and three runs batted in against Seton Hall (24-24). Each double gave Creighton the lead, including the big one in the seventh that cleared Seton Hall right fielder Ryan Ramiz’s head and rolled to the wall. It was another big hit in a big spot for Creighton’s leader in home runs, doubles, and slugging percentage.
“I just happened to be the guy that got the hit; there was three great at-bats before me,” Fitzgerald said. “I just tried to put the barrel on it and good things happened.”
Good things happened for Fitzgerald in a prior at-bat to give a Creighton an early lead against a normally in control Seton Hall starting pitcher Shane McCarthy. The freshman right-hander drilled Creighton shortstop Nicky Lopez with a pitch to put a man on with one out in the bottom of the first inning. Right fielder Brett Murray moved Lopez 90 feet away from home plate with a single to right field on a designed hit-and-run. Then with two outs, Fitzgerald put the first run on the board, scoring Lopez by dropping a base hit into right field and hustling it out for a double.
Matt Warren pitched well despite a no-decision (Spomer/WBR) $ Click to Buy $
The Bluejays added another run on a close play at the plate in the bottom of the fourth inning. Junior designated hitter Matt Gandy drew a walk with one out. Then, after stealing his first base of the season on a botched hit-and-run, he reached third on a throwing error by Seton Hall third baseman Kyle Grimm. With men on the corners, Bluejays senior catcher Kevin Lamb popped a ball up into foul territory. Pirate right fielder Ryan Ramiz laid out to make the catch, allowing Gandy to tag up from third. The throw home by Ramiz was there in time, but Gandy slid safely under the tag — despite protest from Seton Hall players and coaches — to give Creighton a 2-0 lead.
The Pirates took advantage of a Creighton miscue to erase that two-run lead quickly in the top of the fifth inning. Creighton starting pitcher Matt Warren plunked Seton Hall catcher Alex Falconi to put the lead off man aboard. Then Ramiz stepped up and drove a fly ball to the warning track in right field, Brett Murray misjudged it and hit off the junior’s glove and bounced to the wall, putting runners in scoring position with no outs. A sacrifice fly to center field by Seton Hall second baseman Chris Chiaradio scored Falconi and center fielder Derek Jenkins singled up the middle against Warren to tie the game, 2-2. Both runs were unearned, but they counted just the same.
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See photos from Creighton’s win on Thursday night here
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Warren, Creighton’s junior right-hander, gave up only one earned run and tied his career-high with six strikeouts over six-plus innings, but left the game with a tough-luck no decision. His performance wasn’t lost on Creighton head coach Ed Servais, who thought his defense at times put his starting pitcher in tough situations.
“He actually did a pretty good job tonight, if you really look at that game, they scored in the middle part of that game on a ground ball base hit” said Servais, referring to the error in that outfield that put men in scoring position despite Seton Hall not needing a hit to get them there. “We are Division 1 baseball players, you don’t give up two runs on a ground ball base hit. We’ve got to do a couple other things different in that inning and I’ll leave it at that. [Warren] actually did a really good job and that’s as much as we’ve stretched him out all year. He hasn’t thrown a 100 pitches all year, and I believe tonight it was either 102 or 103. I was very pleased how he got into the game. He was very poised. He gave us what we needed, but he can’t make plays behind him. We let him a little bit there in that one inning — he deserved a little better than what he got tonight.”
After Warren lost a 10-pitch at-bat to Falconi that yielded a double to lead off the top of the seventh inning, junior relief pitcher Connor Miller came on and got two straight pop ups to put the Bluejays in position to escape the inning without allowing a run. However, Derek Jenkins had other ideas as he hit a line drive into center field for a go-ahead RBI single. The liner was just out of the reach of Lopez, who ended up head over feet behind second base after attempting to make a diving catch. Pirate left fielder Zack Weigel lined the next pitch from Miller into the right field corner allowing the Jenkins and his blazing speed to score easily from third base, giving the Pirates a 4-2 lead and nine outs away from meeting Big East regular-season champion St. John’s in Friday night’s winner’s bracket game.
The Bluejays, though, were not ready to concede the home field advantage. With the lineup set to turn over, Creighton responded with a big inning in the bottom half of the seventh. Kevin Lamb and sophomore center fielder Daniel Woodrow reached to start the inning. Then Lopez drew a four-pitch walk against Seton Hall relief pitcher Joe DiBenedetto to load the bases with nobody out. Junior first baseman Reagan Fowler followed that with a walk of his own to bring the Bluejays within a run. DiBenedetto bounced back momentarily to strike out Murray to set the stage for Fitzgerald’s aforementioned heroics. Just as he had done earlier in the game, the Illinois-native came through with the clutch hit, sending a hard line drive over Ramiz’s head in right field to plate a pair of runs and give Creighton a lead they would not relinquish the rest of the game.
“We kind of slipped a little bit in that one inning, gave them a couple of opportunities, but I give our guys a lot of credit,” Servais said. “To come back against that left-hander, he kind of tied us up when we were at Seton Hall, so it was good to see us get an opportunity against him again.”
Junior third baseman Harrison Crawford added to the lead with a sacrifice fly into shallow right, but deep enough down the line to score Fowler and cap off the four-run inning. Lopez pushed across an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth inning with his team-leading sixth triple of the season that scored Lamb to give the Bluejays a 7-4 lead.
That proved to be more than enough run support for Creighton’s young dynamic duo at the back end of the bullpen as redshirt freshman Ethan DeCaster stranded a two-out walk in the eighth inning, giving way to sophomore closer David Gerber to earn his ninth save of the season in a scoreless final inning.
The loss drops Seton Hall into the loser’s bracket for a win-or-go home game against Georgetown after the Hoyas fell 2-1 to top seed St. John’s prior to the game between the Bluejays and Pirates. That game is set for 3:30 p.m. (CST). Creighton on the other hand, will put the thrilling, comeback win over Seton Hall in the rear view mirror and get ready to face Big East Pitcher of the Year Ryan McCormick and the St. John’s Red Storm.
“It’s important to play well in the first game. It’s important to win the first game, and in about five minutes we’re looking forward to preparation for [St. John’s],” Ed Servais said.
In McCormick, the Bluejays will get a second crack at a right-hander who held them to just one hit over seven and 1/3 innings of scoreless baseball to help the Red Storm earn a 4-1 victory, and a series split of a rain-shortened weekend.
“He’s really good. There is no getting around it,” Servais said. “This guy he had us last time … I’m really anxious to do a lot of preparation tonight and tomorrow morning as to what we can do differently against [McCormick] that we did not do the first time.
“We got a pretty good guy going, too, that had them last time,” said Servais, referring to his freshman ace Rollie Lacy.
That Bluejay right-hander and All-Big East First Team starting pitcher hurled a complete shutout, scattering four hits and a walk while striking out a career-high eight batters in a 6-0 win over the Red Storm in the first meeting of the season between the teams. Coach Servais isn’t sure what he’s going to get out of his young Friday starter on a big stage, but he’s anxious to find out on Friday night.
“This one is going to be interesting. You’d like to think he’s ready for it. He’s pitched in a lot of situations. He’s pitched a lot of Friday night games, and we all know how important Friday night games are in conference play.”
“Let me just say this about how important the crowd was tonight,” Servais said of the 4,824 fans in attendance. “I really felt the crowd made a huge difference in this game. That’s why you want to host, because you want your crowd to get behind you. We’ve had big crowds here before. This isn’t the first time, but this crowd was different. It felt like it was more than 4,800 people out there, and I hope that that crowd gets behind the team again tomorrow night. We have a lot of confidence in Rollie. He’ll take a deep breath and we’ve been in so many of these games that I don’t think these guys can be fazed anymore. That’s why you put a schedule together the way you put together.”
“The Arkansas game and the Nebraska games that we played in this year were very very intense, so we’ve been in this intense environment before. I believe Rollie will do just fine,” said Servais.
First pitch for Creighton against the Red Storm, who are 12-0 since the calendar flipped from April to May, is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at TD Ameritrade Park.
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