It was another day and another walk-off hit for the Eagles, as this time Gage Morey singled home Eric Gonzalez with the winning run in the ninth inning to win 11-10 and move to 3-0 on the season.
FGCU trailed by as many as four at one point but rallied in the ninth after Jake Smith led off the inning with a hit by pitch. He eventually scored on a game-tying hit from Marc Coffers and then won it right after Morey.
“It’s huge. Anytime with a new team you can come from behind and win, it will be big for us down the road because we’ve done it, we’ve done it early,” said head coach Dave Tollett. “For me, with a young team, I just think a great thing. I thought if we could ever stop them, we could win the ballgame, but we didn’t stop them much today. Our offense, I believed if we could have got to Herring like we did, it would give us a shot.”
Peyton Grey made the start for the Eagles and went three innings, allowing four runs (three earned) and had to use four relievers before finally getting it to Kenton Herring, who earned his second win of the season.
Kohl Gilmore hit his first home run in an Eagles uniform to tie the game at 1 after Eastern Michigan homered, and then took a 4-1 lead after a three run second.
Grey struggled a bit in the third and allowed two runs and eventually the Eagles would fall behind 8-5 until Alex Brait, who had the walk off yesterday, homered to right to bring FGCU within two.
The errors continued to haunt the Eagles as two more unearned runs scored and the deficit doubled to four. They would have another three run inning sparked by a Richie Garcia double in the sixth.
The teams traded runs in the eighth and then FGCU walked it off for the second time in less than 24 hours.
“Marc told me before the inning it 7,8,9 then let’s do it,” Morey said. “I said all right, let’s do it. Either you’re going to do it or I’m going to do it, so it is going to be one of us.”
The Eagles will look for the sweep on Sunday in the final game of a four-game series with Eastern Michigan at 1 P.M.