Feb. 15, 2002

Final Stats

NEW ORLEANS, La. - Senior Beau Richardson struck out eight and allowed just three hits in eight scoreless innings to lead the Tulane baseball team to an 11-1 victory over the Villanova Wildcats Friday night in the Green Wave's home opener at Turchin Stadium.

Richardson only allowed two players to get as far as second base, and the Green Wave offense tallied 14 hits en route to the victory. With the win, Tulane improves to 2-2 on the year while Villanova drops its season opener.

"I thought we played well tonight," head coach Rick Jones said. "We played well defensively, we got some big hits early, and Beau was good. He had some good stuff. His command was not great early, but then settled in and got it going."

Junior Jon Kaplan and sophomore Michael Aubrey each tallied three hits to lead the offensive attack, including a solo home run by Aubrey to lead off the fourth inning. Senior James Jurries went 2-for-4 with a triple and three RBI.

The Green Wave got things going early on as Kaplan led off the bottom of the first with a single before Jurries tripled him home to make it 1-0. That would prove to be the only Richardson would need as he dominated the Wildcat hitters throughout the ballgame.

After giving up a leadoff walk to Christopher Graziano, Richardson would face just four more than the minimum the rest of his outing. From there, junior reliever Chris Searle came on to seal the win. After walking the first two batters he faced and balking them to second and third, Searle would go on to strike out the side and give up an unearned run on a passed ball.

Aubrey's leadoff homer in the third was the first score of a three-run inning as junior Aaron Feldman reached on an error, stole second before a single by freshman Gerald Clark, and advanced to third when sophomore Scott Madden got hit by a John Yeager pitch. Freshman second baseman Tommy Manzella came through one out later with a two-RBI single, and the Green Wave took a 4-0 lead.

The lead swelled to seven in the sixth as the Villanova's Michael Duncan was not able to handle an apparent routine groundout by Manzella with two outs. The error allowed Clark to score from third, and Jurries made the extra at-bats pay off with a two-RBI single later in the stanza.

Tulane closed out its scoring in the eighth when Kaplan hit a leadoff double, and pinch hitters Brooks Shankle, Brian Bormaster and Matt Mann all got hits to give the Green Wave an 11-0 lead.

Richardson earned the win for his first victory of the season, while Yeager was saddled with the loss after giving up five runs (four earned) on seven hits while walking none and striking out three in 3.1 innings of work.

The Green Wave returns to action on Saturday at 2 p.m. when Tulane takes on Villanova at Turchin Stadium for the second contest of a three-game series. The two squads will close out the weekend with a showdown at 1 p.m. on Sunday.