Knights nip Jacksonville with walk-off win

Another bout of last-inning heroics by James Vasquez sent the Knights off the field with a 6-5 walk-off win over Jacksonville on Tuesday night.

A single and two walks had loaded the bases with only one out when Vasquez came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning with the game tied at five runs. That’s when he blasted a single up the middle to send everyone circling the bases. They only needed one to cross home plate, with Dylan Moore doing the honors.

Oviedo’s own Ryan Meyer had started on the mound for the Knights, giving up just one earned run and striking out three.

The win made two in a row for the Knights after coming back to take the final game of their previous series.

The Knights couldn’t manage to send more than three runners across the plate in two blowout losses to Cincinnati last weekend. Turns out they needed Zach Rodgers on the mound.

The Knights’ star hurler won his fifth straight game with an 11-strikeout, three-hit complete game masterpiece Sunday to defeat the Bearcats on minimal run support. In an ironic twist for the Bearcats, their starting pitcher, Dalton Lehnen, would nearly equal the feat, going all nine innings, striking out 11, giving up six hits but walking none.

First baseman James Vasquez would provide both UCF RBIs in the game, blasting a lonely solo shot in an otherwise uneventful second inning, then putting enough wood on a ball to let Erik Barber take advantage of a fielder’s choice to make it home. Four of the six runs scored by the Knights in the series came courtesy of Vasquez.

Only six runs in three games in Cincinnati would come courtesy of UCF’s bats, as they were stifled by the Bearcats’ pitching worse than any team they’ve faced this season.

That could be a bad omen for the Knights, as Cincinnati went into that series with the worst record in the American Athletic Conference. The UCF series was a high point for the Bearcats, who tied their season mark for the fewest runs allowed in a series all season, equaling when they trounced Niagara, a 4,200-student private school that has won only six games in 2015.

The Knights are still at the top of the conference with their 24-10 overall record, but now a mid-pack 3-3 in AAC games.

The Knights host UConn (19-11, 3-3) in a three-game series coming up this weekend. The Huskies are fresh off an up-and-down series against conference leader USF, in which a 7-0 Huskies blowout win was bookended by two slugfest losses.

The series starts at 6:30 p.m. Friday at UCF’s home stadium on campus, followed by a 4 p.m. game Saturday and a 1 p.m. game Sunday.

Rollins baseball

A road trip against one of the Sunshine State Conference’s worst teams wasn’t enough to turn around Rollins’ fortunes, as the Tars lost two of three games to Florida Southern last weekend.

That series would propel Florida Southern ahead of three SSC opponents and out of the bottom of the conference ladder, which is exactly where the losses dropped Rollins. The Tars are now at the bottom with a 16-20 overall record and 3-12 in the conference. That’s a long way down from Nova Southeastern (29-6, 10-2), the SSC’s standings leader and Rollins’ next conference foe.

This weekend, the Tars get a break from conference play with a four-game series against Palm Beach Atlantic (17-14), with the first two games — Wednesday at press time and 3 p.m. Thursday — at home. Then they play two games — at 3 p.m. Saturday and noon Sunday — on the road.