Published: March 21, 2007
YAPHANK, N.Y.
The St. John's offense exploded in the second and seventh
innings to take and protect a lead, and freshman
Miguel Valcarcel won his first career start as St. John's (7-8)
beat Temple (4-11), 7-2, at Baseball Heaven Sports Complex on
Wednesday.
Gil Zayas and
Chris Joachim gave St. John's its first lead with back-to-back
home runs in the second inning and combined for five hits and three
RBI.
Valcarcel threw 22 of his first 25 pitches for strikes and
cruised through his four innings of work. The rookie allowed just
one hit and one unearned run, while striking out five and walking
one to improve to 1-0 on the season.
Nick Luisi,
Nick Cenatiempo,
Ryan Cole,
James Lally and
Colin Lynch allowed one run over the next five innings to
secure the win.
Zayas homered in the second to extend his hitting streak to 11
games, and he finished the game with three hits in four at-bats.
Joachim hit his first home run of the season and added an RBI
single, and freshman
Brian Kemp went 2-for-5 with an RBI, run and stolen base in his
first start in left field.
Zayas and Joachim sparked a four-run rally in the second with
back-to-back long balls to left field. Two more runs scored on an
errant throw by Temple third baseman Mike Kelch on a groundball off
the bat of
Daniel Rose.
Temple answered with an unearned run in the top half of the
third to get within three runs, 4-1. A stolen base was credited as
Carmen Del Mastro scored from third base on a rundown play between
first and second.
Valcarcel left the game after the fourth, and Luisi entered in
relief. The junior Luisi held the Owls hitless and scoreless in his
two innings and gave way to Cenatiempo, who worked around a leadoff
walk to keep Temple off the scoreboard.
The Red Storm rattled off six hits and scored three runs in the
bottom of the seventh to open up a 7-1 lead. Joachim,
Jose Iglesias and Kemp all delivered RBI singles to add to the
St. John's advantage.
The Owls chipped away with a run in the eighth, but Cole induced
a double play and struck out the last batter of the inning to work
out of a bases loaded, no outs jam with just one run allowed.
Lally struck out both batters he faced and Lynch got the final
out for St. John's, which improved to 7-8 on the season and 7-1 in
its last eight games.