4/16/2002 - Baseball
Navy Baseball To Play Host To Maryland Wednesday
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The Navy baseball team will play host to the Maryland Terrapins Wednesday at Max Bishop Stadium. First pitch is slated for 3 p.m.
?We are very excited about playing Maryland at home,? said Navy head coach Steve Whitmyer. ?We hope that we can have as good of a game as we did last time (April 10, a 5-4 loss) against them, except with a different result. They?re a very tough team, and shortstop John McCurdy is having one of the best offensive seasons in the nation this year. We will have to try to contain him and the rest of their lineup to be in a position to win.?
The Mids (12-20, 7-5 Patriot League) are coming off a four-game weekend series with Holy Cross, as Navy won three of the games against its Patriot League rivals. After sweeping both Saturday games by scores of 8-1 and 3-2, respectively, the visiting Crusaders picked up their lone victory of the weekend by scoring a 3-2, 10-inning decision in Sunday?s first game. Navy knocked off the Crusaders, 5-3, in the weekend finale to secure the series win.
Freshman sensation Pete Curnow (Morristown, N.J.) has hit successfully in 10 of his 16 at-bats this season (.625), scoring 10 runs and swiping seven bases. He went 8-for-12 against Holy Cross with a double, three walks, five stolen bases and six runs. Brad Hager (Jr./Delray Beach, Fla.) (.361, .478 on-base percentage) and Neil Brubeck (Sr./Bryan, Texas) hit their first-career home runs against the Crusaders, while John Cocca (Sr./Whitehall, Pa.) and Dean Farmer (So./Knoxville, Tenn.) both will put six-game hitting streaks on the line Wednesday afternoon.
The Terrapins sport a 22-13 record entering tonight?s game against Penn State. After losing Friday night to ACC rival and fourth-ranked Georgia Tech by a 9-6 count, Maryland scored a 9-8 victory in Saturday?s contest against the Yellow Jackets when Anthony Buffone hit a two-run walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Sunday?s game was halted in the seventh inning with Georgia Tech up 12-1 after a bench-clearing brawl followed Terrapin catcher Jason Maxey?s home run. McCurdy (.486 batting average, 16 HR, 63 RBI, 16 SB, .945 slugging pct.) is one of the best shortstops in the nation, and ranked in the NCAA?s top-five last week in batting average (third), home runs per game (T-fifth) and RBI per game (second).
The same two teams met April 10 at Shipley Field in College Park, Md., with the Terrapins scoring a 5-4 victory in the bottom of the ninth inning. Maryland freshman Kyle George knocked a one-out single to left field to score the winning run. Navy, led by a 2-for-4 performance by Curnow (two stolen bases, two runs) in his collegiate debut, led 4-3 after its half of the seventh inning. However, McCurdy hit a towering solo home run over the left field fence in the bottom of the eighth inning to knot the game at 4-4. Reliever Derek Hoffman picked up the victory after pitching one inning with a strikeout for the Terps. Bryan Koehler (Sr./Lutz, Fla.) picked up his only loss of the season in relief for the Mids.
