AUBURNDALE, Fla. - Wheaton College baseball junior Hal Landers (Salem, N.H./Salem) smacked two hits, swiped a pair of bases and made three impressive catches patrolling center field during his team's 7-5 victory over Keystone College on Tuesday at the Lake Myrtle Sports Complex.
The Lyons, who moved up to 18th nationally according to the most recent D3baseball.com poll, improved to 2-1. Receiving national votes, the Giants fell to 3-3.
Junior Dan Haugh (Andover, Mass./Saint John's Prep) and sophomore Eric Jensen (Gorham, N.H./Gorham) each went 2-for-3 with a pair of runs scored and a double. Jensen's solo home run in the third brought Wheaton to within 3-2.
Sophomore Paul O'Neill (Framingham, Mass./Framingham) followed Jensen's blast with a two-run double into deep left field that gave the Lyons their first lead of the game, one they wouldn't relinquish. Jensen got plunked twice as a part of five Wheaton hit batsmen, while sophomore Sean Ryan (Norton, Mass./Norton) tripled home the Blue and White's first run.
Sophomore southpaw Justin Santiago (Bronx, N.Y./Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy) picked up his first victory of the season while improving to 6-0 in his career. He fanned one batter and walked two while allowing five runs, four earned, on six hits in five-plus innings. Classmate Justin Dickinson (Stratford, Conn./Bunnell) earned his first career save after tossing four scoreless frames of three-hit ball with one strikeout.
After yielding two first-inning runs, Wheaton answered with six of the game's next seven to capture a 6-3 lead in the fifth. Jensen doubled down the left field line to lead off the fifth and was sacrificed to third before scoring on Munley's sac fly. Haugh followed with a double and was brought around on sophomore Dan Gusovsky's (Andover, Mass./Andover) base knock.
Keystone answered with two runs of its own in the top of the sixth that made the score 6-5. The Lyons loaded the bags with nobody out in the home half but managed just one run, which was the last of the scoring, as Dickinson retired the Giants in order during the seventh and eighth innings, setting down eight straight batters in one stretch.
Wheaton remains at Lake Myrtle Sports Complex tomorrow with a 9:30 a.m. game against Saint Joseph's College of Maine in a rematch of last year's NCAA Tournament regional semifinal round game won by the Monks.
