Titans Roll Past Hawks Behind Meyers, Potent Offense

Eastern Florida's baseball team ran its overall record to 12-5 on Sunday with an easy 14-4 victory over Hillsborough Community College at Bruce Bochy Field on the Melbourne Campus.

The Titans rapped out 17 hits with Manny Rodriguez, Norbert Navarro and Angel Velez getting three each. Rodriguez and Velez also scored three times each.

The offensive explosion – the Titans led 10-0 after five innings – was more than enough support for winning pitcher Matt Meyers who threw no-hit ball and struck out three over five innings before giving way to four relievers.

Hillsborough collected nine hits over the final four innings and four runs over the final three. The Hawks fell to 8-10.

"He's had a quality start every time out," Titans head coach Jeff Tam said of Meyers, a sophomore lefty. "His work ethic is second to none out here. We have guys who just bust their tail on off days. Starts they're still working hard. You can see the results.

"We kept it short for him today just to get some other guys some work. He'll go on five days rest next Friday against (FCSAA Southern Conference foe) Miami (Dade College."

The Titans play at Miami Dade in Kendall on Friday and Saturday.

As for Sunday's offensive output, Tam was pleased.

"Anytime you get some good pitching and some solid defense early and you manufacture some runs early – we swung the bats well – you can't argue with that."

That being said Tam sees some areas where his team can improve.

"There's still things we've got to clean up, simple, routine things that I demand to be done on a regular basis and we're still not at that level," he said.

"The situational hitting with runners on third we were 1-for-4 today. Those types of things in conference matter. I'm going to keep barking at them and we're going to keep working and they're going to get it eventually."

The Titans are 1-2 in conference heading into four conference games in six days. They host Indian River State at 6 p.m. Tuesday in a game to be televised live on WEFS-TV and streamed at www.efsctitans.com/webcast. They visit Indian River in Fort Pierce on Wednesday where they will complete a game suspended by rain and then play their regularly scheduled game. They then will visit Miami Dade.

Admission to Titans home games is free.