The Wolfpack opened its season by losing its first three-game series against the Elon Phoenix 1-2. The Pack picked up its first win of the season blowing out Elon in a 17-4 contest Friday evening, but couldn’t build on that win Saturday and Sunday with the final scores of the other two games being 12-2 and 4-2.
In the season opener junior Pratt Maynard drove in five runs to lead the Pack to victory. Sophomore Chris Diaz also played an outstanding game, pulling out a 4-4 performance, which is a new career high for Diaz. Junior Cory Mazzoni picked up the win for the Pack. He allowed all four of Elon’s runs in six innings. Freshman D.J. Thomas, senior Brandon Price and senior Nick Rice also pitched an inning each.
Head coach Elliot Avent spoke very highly of both the defensive effort as well as the effort by Maynard.
“I thought defensively we played well this weekend,” coach Elliot Avent said. “Pratt [Maynard] was so locked in. He didn’t get near the amount of hits he deserved, he had a good weekend.”
Sophomore Grant Sasser echoed his coaches sentiment about the offense of the weekend.
“We got Pratt absolutely crushing the ball and Diaz is hitting awesome, and that’s all we can ask for,” Sasser said.
During the second game, State held a 2-1 lead in the top of the fourth inning off of two solo home runs from Diaz and sophomore Danny Canela, but Elon took advantage of sophomore John Easly at the mound and fired back by scoring three runs in the bottom of the inning and broke it open by scoring another three runs in the fifth inning.
Unlike the first two games of the series, the third turned out to be a battle between the two squads. Elon’s Seth Canipe’s home run to left field gave Elon the early 1-0 lead in the top of the second inning. The Wolfpack got on the board with a Ciencin sacrifice fly to center to bring Ganis home. The two teams battled back and forth until the top of the ninth inning. Sasser made a crucial error to bring Cyle Rasmus home to bring the game to 2-3 and an RBI from Harry Austin brought Grant McCoury home to get the final score to 2-4. Sasser was given a loss decision.
“I am Very, very, extremely disappointed,” Sasser said. “Just go back and look at what you did wrong and you can’t allow it to happen again in the future. We made some positive movements. We did pretty decent holding runners. We have to make better pitches. “
Diaz played an outstanding series compiling a .667 batting average with eight hits and scoring five runs despite the fact that this is the first series using the new NCAA bats.
“There is definitely a little bit of a difference about how the ball jumps off the bat but we still have to play the game and we still have to hit the ball hard,” Diaz said. “I really just tried to find the barrel on the ball and a lot of hits just found the hole. I just tried the ball in play and hope that something good happened”
The Pack will resume action Friday as it travels to Myrtle Beach for the weekend to take on Pacific, Cal and Coastal Carolina. The Pack then returns home against the Davidson Wildcats on Tuesday at at Doak Field.
