HOOVER, Ala. – Birmingham-Southern baseball opened its 2021 season with a 9-5 win over Oglethorpe on a chilly Saturday afternoon at the Hoover Met Complex.
Noah Best (Carrollton, Ga./Villa Rica HS) led the Panthers at the plate. He was 3-for-4 with two runs and a RBI.
Cole Steadman (Birmingham, Ala./Briarwood Christian) and
Drew Love (Birmingham, Ala./Calhoun CC) also had three hits on the day. And
Andy Hammond (Oxford, Ala./Oxford HS) earned the win after going five innings and striking out a game-high six batters and giving up just one walk. The senior no-hit the Stormy Petrels for 4 2/3 innings.
BSC (1-0) played its first game since March 8, 2019 when last season was abruptly cancelled.
The Panthers, who served as the visiting, struck first with a pair of runs in the third inning. Love and Evans tallied RBI singles to give BSC a 2-0 lead. They then manufactured a run in third to extend the lead to 3-0. Best drew a leadoff walk and moved to second on a sac bunt by
Camden McNearney (Kennesaw, Ga./Harrison HS). Best moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on
Luke DePiero (Atlanta, Ga./Walker HS) ground out.
The Panthers stretched the lead to 7-0 with a four-run burst in the fifth inning. Best had an RBI single and McNearney stroked a two-run triple into the left field corner. DePiero's second RBI ground out in as many innings capped the frame.
Oglethorpe (0-2) scored four runs, all with two outs, in the bottom of the inning to get back in the game. The Stormy Petrels cut the deficit to 7-5 in the eighth on Chris Kean's two-out single. Oglethorpe brought the go-ahead fun to the plate in the eighth inning but left two runners on base when
Troy Bearden (Gulf Shores, Ala./Wallace-Dothan) got Andrew Noack to ground out to end the inning.
BSC made it 9-5 with two runs in the top of the ninth. Love plated a run with an RBI double and Steadman followed with a bunt single to drive in a run. The Panthers finished with 15 hits, six walks and five hit batters.
Brian Williams (Marietta, Ga./Lassiter HS) reached base in five of six plate appearances, including three walks, one hit by pitch and one single. He added two stolen bases and scored two runs.
The series was originally scheduled to played in Atlanta but was moved to Hoover due to weather issues. The teams will close out the weekend series with a double header on Sunday beginning at 11:30 a.m.
