Jamestown, NC—The Marshalltown Community College baseball team dropped a pair of games to Guilford Technical Community College on Sunday afternoon to split the four-game weekend series with the Titans. MCC fell in game one 10-4 and dropped the finale 11-10.
Enmanuel Lopez (Santiago, Dominican Republic/Prepara) paced the Tiger offense with four hits on the day, all going for extra bases with three doubles and a home run. The sophomore drove in two runs and scored four more. Luis Duran (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic/Centro de Estudio Espaillat) collected five hits and drove in four runs in the doubleheader.
MCC (7-6) fell behind early in game one after Guilford (10-5) jumped out to a 6-0 lead. Lopez boosted the Tigers with a solo home run to get on the board in the fourth. Lopez and Duran added RBI hits in a three-run fifth to get MCC within two, 6-4, but the Titans tacked on four more runs to take game one.
Lopez finished the opener 3-4 at the plate with a pair of RBI while Duran went 2-4. Jose Mieses (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic/Prepara) added a pair of hits for the Tigers. Sophomore Holt Hunziker (Milford, IA/Okoboji) tossed his third-straight scoreless relief appearance for the Tigers.
The Tigers struck first in game two with a big first inning. Adam Barrett (Council Bluffs, IA/Abraham Lincoln) delivered a two-run double while Carter Eldridge (West Des Moines, IA/Waukee) connected on his first-career home run, a three-run shot to put MCC up 6-0 after one. The Titans got on the board with two runs in the bottom half, but Lopez and Duran scored on an error in the second to keep the six-run lead.
Guilford chipped away at the deficit with a run in the second and two more in the third to get within three, 8-5. Duran kept the offense alive with a solo home run to open the fourth inning. Both sides went scoreless in their next two at bats, but the Titans hung six runs in the bottom of the fifth to take an 11-9 lead. The Tigers managed just one run over the last two innings, a sixth inning run from Hecnuel Serrano (Carolina, Puerto Rico/Luz a Calderon) to come up short in the North Carolina trip finale.
Duran posted three hits, three runs, and three RBI in the loss while Eldridge and Serrano recorded a pair of hits.
Through 13 games, Lopez is currently tied for third in the nation with nine doubles and tied for fifth with 13 extra base hits.
The Tigers are off until March 11 when they travel to Crowder College for a four-game weekend series.
