Eagles Soar to First MEAC Baseball Southern Division Championship

DURHAM NC – The North Carolina Central Eagles baseball program captured its first MEAC Southern Division title with a pair of wins, 4-2 and 5-0, to sweep the doubleheader and clinch the weekend series on Friday, May 14 at Durham Athletic Park.

NCCU (24-18, 16-11 MEAC) has qualified for the MEAC Baseball Championship for the first time since 2016 and will play at noon on Thursday, May 20 at Marty Miller Field in Norfolk, Virginia, against Delaware State who is the number-two seed of the Northern Division.       

GAME ONE: FAMU (21-31, 15-12 MEAC) took a 1-0 lead over the Eagles in the top of the first, but NCCU wasted no time to pull level as Kokko Figueiredo (Fortuna, Calif.) needed just two pitches to send a leadoff homer out to right to tie the game. Cort Maynard (Charlotte, N.C.) followed the home run with a double, and he came in to score on a well-executed squeeze bunt by Jacob Raby (Granite Falls, N.C.) to give the Eagles a 2-1 lead.

NCCU was kept off the board until the bottom of the fourth when both Tristan Shea (Charlotte, N.C.) and Luis DeLeon (Providence, R.I.) picked up RBI to put the hosts ahead, 4-1. Ryan Miller (Blandon, Pa.) pitched 6.1 innings and collected seven strikeouts without allowing an earned run. He earned the win to finish the regular season with a 10-0 record and has broken his tie with Devin Sweet to set a new NCCU single-season win record.

Scott Meylan (Pittsburg, Calif.) came in for the final two outs and struck out both batters he faced to earn his 10th save of the year and clinch a playoff spot for the Eagles.

GAME TWO: The Eagles struck first in the clinching game by way of an RBI single by Ahmir Courier (Jackson, N.J.) in the bottom of the second, and that was all the breathing room that Chris Krennrich (Fox Lake, Ill.) would need.

Krennrich pitched five innings of shutout ball and exited with a 5-0 lead after the Eagles broke the game open in the fourth with three runs coming in on a pair of home runs by Patrick Doran (Evergreen Park, Ill.) and Nick Fajardo (Durham, N.C.). DeLeon scored the final run of the game in the bottom of the fifth when he used heads-up baserunning to make his way home from second base after a throwing error following a dropped third strike.

Sam Murchison (Siler City, N.C.) pitched the final two innings and struck out a career-high-tying five batters, including the last three he faced to start the celebrations for the Eagles.

NCCU and FAMU will take the diamond at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 15, for the regular-season finale at the Durham Athletic Park. The NCCU baseball program will recognize its senior student-athletes at 12:30 p.m.