Facing a 10-0 deficit after four innings, the Covenant baseball team staged a herculean comeback bid that vaulted them to the 15-14 victory at Sewanee on Tuesday afternoon.
Will Cleland and Will Carlton each had three hits and combined for three doubles, with Cleland driving in three runs. Scott Gillespie and Perry Rigby each homered for the Scots, while Caleb Bloye had a pair of two-run base hits. Gillespie also drove in three runs.
Rigby came up big on the mound for Covenant to get the win throwing the final 5.1 innings.
Things didn't look too good early on, however, as the host Tigers raced out to 4-0 lead in the first inning.
Tony Dykes hit a three-run home run to jump-start Sewanee's offense. Ryan Poole's two-run single in the third stretched the lead to 6-0.
An RBI double and another three-run home run in the fourth gave Sewanee its 10-0 lead, while Covenant had only managed to scratch together three base-runners over the first four innings.
The fifth inning marked the turning point of the game. Rigby got things going with a leadoff double. Luke Harvey drove in the first run with a sacrifice fly one batter before KC Simons made it 10-2 with an RBI double. Cleland drove in a run with another sacrifice fly, and Bloye drew the Scots even closer with a two-run double.
When the inning came to a close, Covenant had scored five runs on four hits, and Sewanee's lead now stood at 10-5.
Three more runs in the sixth brought the Scots to within two, at 10-8. Cleland had an RBI single, and Bloye provided a two-RBI hit.
Covenant took its first lead of the day in the seventh with six more runs. Rigby led off with a solo homer, his second of the year, off Tiger pitcher Jared Davenport. Three batters later, Andrew Beck connected for an RBI double. After another run scored on a throwing error, Gillespie cleared the bases with his three-run home run, giving the Scots a 14-10 lead giving them 14 consecutive runs over three innings. The homer for Gillespie was his fourth of the season.
Sewanee finally stopped the streak in the bottom of the seventh. After two errors gave the Tigers runners on first and third with two outs, Dykes came through by depositing his second homer of the game, a three-run shot, to make it 14-13.
Clinging to a 14-13 lead, Cleland added an insurance run for the Scots with his RBI double.
The Scots would need that run going into the ninth as Sewanee scored a run and had runners on second and third with two outs in the ninth inning before Rigby got Michael Walker to ground out to Simons at shortstop to end the game.
Rigby (1-0) came in to pitch the last 5.1 innings, providing a huge boost to Covenant's bullpen. He got the win by giving up just one earned run on four hits with four strikeouts.
Bloye drove in four runs, and Gillespie and Cleland three each. Seven Covenant hitters recorded at least two hits and nine scored at least one run. The seven doubles are the second-most in a game in program history.
Marshall Ussery (0-2) gets the loss for Sewanee, which used six pitchers on the day. The Tigers' three and four-spot hitters went a combined 5-for-10 with six runs scored, three home runs, and 10 RBIs.
Up next for the Scots is a 4 p.m. game against Greensboro on Friday on Lookout Mountain.