BRONX, N.Y. - Clay Smith turned in a stellar performance in the Atlantic 10 conference tournament to defeat the Saint Joseph's Hawks 6-0. Smith went nine innings of shutout baseball with three hits four strikeouts and two walks.
The Hawks entered the game extremely fatigued, this game being their third in 24 hours. Saint Joseph's played a 11-inning game on Thursday night, followed by a 11:00 a.m. (local time) first pitch this morning.
The Billiken offense erupted in a six run performance. In the second inning, Connor Gandossy had an RBI single up the middle to score the first run of the contest. Alec Sole followed suit with a single through the left side, scoring the Bills second run of the inning.
With a 2-0 lead into the third inning, the Bills tacked on another insurance run in the third on an RBI single from Grant Nelson.
There was another run scored in the fifth on an RBI single from Mike Vigliarolo to score Nelson from third.
Saint Louis left no doubt in the ninth, scoring two more runs in the top of the inning. Danny Brennan poked a single to left field to score Jordan Hammerman. Marco DiRoma then stole third for his 14th swipe of the season. The resulting throw went into left field, scoring DiRoma. The final score was 6-0.
Saint Louis is now 41-17 on the year. The Billikens will now play Richmond at 7:30 p.m. in the final elimination game of the A-10 tournament. The Spiders defeated SLU in their first meeting in the tournament.
