#TCCBaseball comes up short in bid for Wild Card berth

NICEVILLE, Fla. (April 24, 2016) – Tallahassee Community College's baseball season ended on Sunday when the game-tying run was thrown out at home in a 7-6 loss at Northwest Florida State College.

Tallahassee (34-18) and Northwest Florida State finished with identical 8-12 records in Panhandle Conference play, good for a third-place tie in the league standings. However, today's victory clinched the season series for the Raiders, who won three of five meetings with Tallahassee, and gave them the PC's Wild Card berth by virtue of winning the head-to-head tie-breaker.

Northwest Florida State's season will continue a week from Monday in a one-game playoff against the third-place team from the Suncoast Conference.

The Eagles' season is over – and ended in excruciating fashion.

Down to their final two outs, an Ethan Crout single and Deyvid Silva's third double of the game put the tying runs in scoring position with just one out. After a strike out, Crout scored on pinch-hitter Tyler Kinard's single to left, and Silva rounded third, heading for home with the tying run. But the relay throw was on the mark and the bang-bang call went in favor of the Raiders, ending the game with the Eagles' 11^th and final runner left on base.

Silva finished 4-for-5 with two RBIs to pace Tallahassee's 15-hit attack.

The game was a back-and-forth affair from the outset.

Both teams scored two runs in their first at-bat, and Northwest Florida State scored two more in the second but Tallahassee answered to tie the game an inning later.

Doubles by Zach Featherstone, Crout and Silva resulted in two runs to knot the score at 4-all.

The score remained deadlocked at four into the sixth when Bryan Scheker's solo homer put the Eagles in front, conjuring up memories of Mike Dawley's eventual game-winning homer in a win-or-go-home finale 16 years ago at Gulf Coast State College.

Today, however, the lead was short-lived.

The Raiders scored the tying run in their half of the sixth and loaded the bases to knock out Thomas Nicoll, the second of three Tallahassee pitchers. Skylar Arias got out of the jam with just the one run allowed, but the Raiders got to the Tallahassee lefty in the seventh for what proved to be the winning runs.

After the inning began with consecutive hits, Handsome Monica's sac-fly scored the tie-breaking run, and Shawn Feltner's single scored what proved to be the winning run.

Tallahassee lost despite outhitting the host Raiders, 15-9.

In addition to Silva, the Eagles got multi-hit games from Featherstone (2-for-5, 2 R), Crout (2-for-4, 2 R, 2 RBI) and Scheker (2-for-4, R, RBI).

Nick Marchese started and went 2.0 innings for Tallahassee before giving way for Nicoll, who allowed only two hits and struck out five in 3.2 innings.

Arias (5-5) went the final 2.1 innings and was charged with the loss.