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Eastlake, Ohio -- University of Lynchburg baseball graduate student Wesley Arrington threw his third complete game of the postseason as the Hornets upset No. 1 Endicott 7-2 in the NCAA 2024 Division III baseball championship.
The Gulls entered the tournament as the No. 1 seed in the bracket and with a 46-2 record. They ran into a surging Lynchburg team riding a 10-game winning streak and Arrington, who now owns a 1.08 ERA in the postseason over 41 2/3 innings with 39 strikeouts and a 5-0 record. Lynchburg's 11-game winning streak is its longest since 2021 when the Hornets won 12 games in a row early in the season.
The Gulls put a runner on second base in the bottom of the first, but Brandon Garcia threw out the runner trying to advance to third on a grounder right at the sophomore shortstop. Garcia went on to go 2-5 with three RBI. Another run came in off the bat of Garcia, but the run scored on an error in the fourth.
Two of Garcia's RBI came in the second after Lynchburg had already built a 2-0 lead on Endicott's ace Jordan Gottesman. The second-team All-American entered the game with an 11-0 record and over 100 strikeouts in 80 innings. While he did fan four Hornets, Lynchburg knocked Gottesman out of the game by the sixth inning after O'Kelly McWilliams IV doubled.
After scoring twice in the sixth, Endicott threatened again after back-to-back singles to start the eighth. Arrington stranded all three runners by striking out the side with a single sprinkled in there, stranding the bases loaded and preserving Lynchburg's four-run lead.
Benton Jones extended Lynchburg's lead when he drove home McWilliams IV, who was standing on third after doubling and taking third on a wild pickoff attempt.
Arrington picked up three more Ks to end the game and secure his third complete game of the postseason. Arrington's heroics started with a no-hitter against Randolph-Macon in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championship on May 10. He also went nine against Ithaca in the Cleveland regional, and went eight innings against La Verne in California last week.
The Hornets (36-15) will play No. 11 Misericordia on Saturday, June 1 at 1:15 p.m. The winner will receive an off day on Sunday, June 2. Endicott and Pomona-Pitzer square off in an elimination game Saturday morning from Classic Auto Group Park in Eastlake, Ohio, the site of the entire NCAA 2024 Division III baseball championship.
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--LYN--
