Pioneers Advance to Regional Championship

Sandusky, OH – The Delta College baseball team inched closer to it's second regional title on Wednesday, defeating Owens Community College 11-8 to advance to the regional final on Thursday.  The win ups the Delta record to 27-24 on the season and they will play the winner of the Owens and Lorain game where they will need to be defeated twice in order to be knocked out of the tournament.

On a blustery and windy day, Delta struck for two runs in the second inning as back to back errors gave them runners at second and third where Cam Floyd laced a double to left to score two.  Owens tied it up in the bottom of the frame courtesy of back to back errors by the Pioneers.

A five run third inning made it 7-2 in favor of Delta as Matt Fisher, Carson Longstreth, Nolan Raymond, and Andrew Gauthier each ripped run scoring doubles.  They added one more in the fourth and two in the sixth inning to take a commanding 10-2 lead behind the starting pitching of Joe Tany.  A single run by Owens in the seventh made it 10-3 before things got interesting.

The Express scored three runs in the seventh to make it a 10-5 game and end the day for Tany.  Three hits, an error and walk contributed to the Owens runs.  With Alex Dingee, on the bump for DC in the eighth, the Express scored two more for a 10-8 game heading in to the ninth.

Delta was able to score one run in the top of the frame when Raymond scored on a Evan Pocius squeeze before turning the game over to Delta pitcher Alex Snider for the ninth.  Snider allowed a two out double and a hit batter before striking out the final batter to collect his second save of the season. 

"The wind wreaked havoc on both defenses today but in the end we were able to get just enough offense to make up for it," said Delta head coach Danny Smith.  "We're in a good spot with plenty of pitching left to win this thing if we can correct some of the errors and continued to manufacture runs."

Cam Floyd led the offense with three hits and three RBI while Matt Fisher had two doubles and scored two runs.  Nolan Raymond added a single and a double while Cam Fowler added two runs and two stolen bases.  Tany improved to 3-4 on the season on the hill, throwing six and a third innings while allowing one earned run on five hits and striking out two.

The winner of the Region XII tournament will advance to next weekends best two-out-of-three Super Regional against the winner of Region IV.  The games would take place at the Region IV winner's home field in Illinois.