The Buccaneer baseball team dropped both games of their double header with the Wofford Terriers last Saturday afternoon at Howard Johnson Field.
The Bucs (8-18, 2-9) were outscored 22-8 and out hit 27-16 over both games by the Terriers (10-12, 5-2).
“We’re a hard ballclub to figure out,” Head Coach Tony Skole said. “I don’t know which team is going to show up. Today we didn’t come out and compete very hard.
“I think we prepare as well as any team,” he said. “But when the lights are on we seem (to) not get the job done.”
In game one of the doubleheader the Bucs went down 2-0 in the top of the second inning when the Terriers’ Brian Casey belted a two-run homer, but were able to answer back in the bottom half of the inning.
Behind back-to-back homeruns by Ryan McKinney, his second of the season, and Scott Rose, his fifth, the Bucs knotted the score up 2-2, but that would be as close as they would get.
Wofford answered right back with three runs in the top off the third inning off the Bucs’ Reid Casey and then scored another three in the top of the fifth and two in the sixth to close the book on Casey.
“They got some good swings off Reid,” Skole said.
“They were able to do a couple of things early in the game that hurt us.”
The Terriers would add three more runs in the top of the eighth to cap the scoring and give them the victory, 13-4.
Casey got the loss and dropped to two wins and five losses on the season as he struck out six and only walked three, but gave up 10 earned runs in just 5.1 innings pitched.
Tate Osterman received the win for the Terriers, going seven innings and improving his record to 5-2.
On the positive side, the Bucs had four players with two or more hits.
McKinney, to go along with his homerun, added a double in the fourth inning and went 2-for-4 on the day with two runs scored and one RBI.
Shortstop Jeremy Terry went 3-for-5 with one run scored, first baseman Andy Baxter went – for-5 and second baseman Brandon Cross went 2-for-4 with one RBI. In the second game, the Bucs briefly held the lead, 2-1, in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Nathan Copeland scored after being hit by a pitch and Brandon Cross reached home on a terrible throw to second by the Terriers’ catcher D.J. Rhodes, who was trying to pick off Bucs’ Bryan Crouse on a stolen-base attempt.
However the Terriers came firing back in the top of the fifth with two runs off the Bucs’ starting pitcher Josh Kite, as Steve Casey scored on a sacrifice fly by Tommy Todd and Brian Casey scored on a single to left-center field by Rhodes.
Wofford added four more runs in the top of the sixth and two in the eighth off the Bucs’ pitching staff to give them a comfortable lead at 9-2.
The Bucs were held to just three hits and committed four errors through the first eight innings of game two with the Terriers.
In the bottom of the ninth the Bucs put two more runs on the board, when Chad Boruff reached on a base-on-balls and scored on a balk by the Terriers’ Joey Cress and Ryan Hyder scored on a single by Kirk Keithley, making the final score 9-4.
Josh Kite received the loss for the Bucs and dropped to 1-4 on the season as he went five innings, giving up five earned runs with five strikeouts and five bases-on-balls.
Skole was not particularly upset with his pitching staff, but rather with the lack of run support and some players not playing to their ability.
“We’re getting good pitching,” he said. “We’re not getting the plays behind our pitching, or getting enough run support. A lot of our kids are underachieving, they’re not playing to their potential.”
The Bucs are sitting close to the bottom of the Southern Conference rankings, only ahead of VMI, which is 0-6 in conference action.
“It’s very frustrating. We’re behind the eight-ball right now,” Skole said. “Our guys are not mentally tough right now, they are getting down on themselves too early.”
The Bucs still have a lot of time to work out their trouble in conference play with much of their conference schedule still ahead of them.
“We’re trying everything,” Skole said. “We’re trying to shake up things, trying to get different guys in there.

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