Baseball collects confidence in win over first-place Delaware

Jim Swing
Assistant Sports Editor

For the past few weeks, the VCU baseball team searched for a spark plug heading down the final stretch of the regular season.

They had just dropped four out of their last five outings and were heading in the wrong direction in an untimely manner.

The final match of a three-game weekend series against first-place Delaware presented a perfect opportunity for the eighth-place Rams to get back on track moving forward Sunday afternoon.

And they took advantage.

VCU poured on nine runs in 17 hits to defeat the Blue Hens 9-1 in a slugfest that gave the Rams their largest margin of victory in nearly a month.

Assistant head coach Cory Whitby – who stepped in for head coach Paul Keyes after Keyes was ejected in the third inning of Saturday’s game – expressed the importance of his team’s performance following Sunday’s tilt.

“Every win for us right now is important,” Whitby said. “I think just the way we played today is more important than a win. We came out swinging the bats pretty well, and David Benson did a great job on the mound for us, and that’s just something we built on and had a good tempo with it.”

Benson threw 99 pitches in a complete game, allowing just one run on seven hits and no walks to improve to 4-2 on the season. His swagger on the mound was unmatched by previously undefeated Delaware starter Matt Soren who gave up five runs and was replaced midway through the third inning. Despite a nearly flawless day on the hill, Benson was relieved by his teammates on the offensive side of the ball.

“It felt real good,” Benson said. “It’s real nice when the offense picks you up and puts up an eight-spot so it makes my job a little easier. First part of the game I wasn’t getting ahead like I’d liked, but as you can see in the second half of the game I really turned it on.”

Junior Taylor Perkins and freshman Joey Cujas combined for four hits and seven RBI, including a two-run blast by Perkins in the bottom of the fifth that cleared the bases for his fourth of the season.

Freshman Bill Cullen took advantage of every chance possible to set himself up into scoring position, going 4-for-5 on the day and adding three runs to add to his tally of 25 on the season.

Despite dropping 2-of-3 games in the weekend series, Sunday’s win allots an added amount of confidence for the Rams moving ahead in the season.

But perhaps the most sanguine player on the team right now comes as one of the youngest in Cujas.

The Midlothian native has produced a hit in 14 of his last 24 at-bats, along with 11 RBIs in the past four games.

“I feel real confident at the plate right now,” Cujas said. “I feel like I have a pretty good swing going for me and I’m just confident.”

VCU (17-24, 9-12) will require motivation from Sunday’s game along with every bit of poise available as it forges ahead to face No. 1 ranked Virginia Tuesday night.

“Right now every game is big,” Whitby said. “We’ve just got to focus on one game at a time; that’s the biggest thing for us. We’ll take the positives out of this game and this weekend and build on Tuesday.”