University of Delaware Athletics
Allen, Bowren Highlight Delaware's Win over Penn
4/25/2018 6:29:00 PM | Baseball
NEWARK, Del. – It was a day of firsts for the University of Delaware baseball team Wednesday afternoon, as freshman Winston Allen earned his first career win and second baseman Erik Bowren hit his first Blue Hens home run in Delaware's 3-1 victory over Penn at Bob Hannah Stadium.
The victory improves the Blue Hens (22-17) to a season-best five games over .500. In his first career collegiate start, Allen threw five shutout
With the game still scoreless in the bottom of the third inning, Bowren gave the Blue Hens a 1-0 advantage hitting a home run off the top of the fair pole atop the 'Blue Monster' in left field. Delaware doubled its lead in the fourth when a Jordan Hutchins ground-ball scored Nick Patten from first base.
The game remained 2-0 until the top of the seventh when Penn added a run off Cole Benjamin cutting the Delaware lead in half. The game remained 2-1 until the bottom of the eighth when Kyle Baker launched his second home run of the season to extend the Delaware lead.
After throwing a scoreless eighth inning with a pair of strikeouts, senior Matt Hornich returned for the ninth, throwing another zero to earn his first save of the season.
Delaware returns to action this weekend for a critical Colonial Athletic Association series at The College of Charleston. First pitch Friday from Charleston is set for 6 p.m.
Head coach Jim Sherman:
"
“I saw some good pitching today. Allen threw well and made some pitches when he needed to. He got into a bit of trouble, but he worked his way out of it. We got good follow-up innings from Joey, Cole and I thought Hornich was really sharp in his two innings. We wanted to see him pitch deeper in the game. Then we got some timely home runs from Bowren and Baker. Not a great hitting display, but you can credit Penn for that. Their pitchers did a good job of keeping it close. It was a good game for us.
“It's cliché but we're just going to take it one game at a time. The mentality is almost one inning at
Bowren:
“Winning today's game was really important for us because we pulled out a close one against Delaware State yesterday, and we wanted to come back today and get another victory. We're feeling pretty good about ourselves heading into this weekend after a tough loss on Sunday. I think the last two days have built our momentum back up because we picked up two big midweek wins. Charleston is going to be a really tough opponent this weekend so these two games were really important because it allowed us to gain momentum heading into the weekend. Our mindset this weekend is to just attack it like we have the last two weekends, where we earned big series victories over UNCW and James Madison. Hopefully, we can take the mindset that we had these last two weeks and bring it into Charleston. If we can win two of three against Charleston we'll be in a really good spot in the CAA. We just need to come out and be aggressive getting behind Kyle [Hinton] and Billy [Sullivan IV] I think we'll be good.”
On what he saw on his home run:
“He was a bit of a sidearm pitcher, so I was trying to get a pitch I could elevate. He was throwing a bit softer, so I was able to move up a bit in the box which allowed me to square up the ball. I had two strikes on me and I saw a pitch up and in that, I was able to turn on. Luckily it stayed fair. I was pretty excited about that.”
HEN SCRATCHINGS:
• Delaware's pitchers limited Penn to just 1-18 with runners on base and to 0-8 with runners in scoring position.
• The Blue Hens have now allowed just two runs (one earned) in their last 22 innings pitched.
• Today's performance lowers the Blue Hens team ERA to 3.99 this season.
• UD improves to 16-5 when scoring first and to 19-4 when scoring at least three runs.
• For just the fourth time all season Delaware won a game in which it was out-hit. The Hens were previously 3-16 when getting out-hit.
• Patten extended his on-base streak to 30 games with a first-inning walk.
• Freshman Joey Haass pitched a scoreless sixth inning for the Blue Hens.
• Baker hit his first home run since Feb. 17. The junior drove in his 29th run of the year.
• Mohollen scored his 33rd run of the season.
• Delaware improves to 6-0 in midweek day games.
•
• Allen's five shutout innings lowered his ERA by nearly three points to 4.67.
