Eight Homers Back Virginia Tech In Blowout of Marist, 20-2
Nathan Andrews
Staff Writer
March 12, 2024
Virginia Tech's Henry Cooke went yard in the Hokies' 20-2 rout of Marist. (Virginia Tech Athletics)
BLACKSBURG – A beautiful day for baseball transformed into a blowout quickly on Tuesday. For the Hokies (12-3), their 20-2 blowout of Marist (4-11) made for an even more beautiful day of baseball.
Many may have not heard of Marist College, located in Poughkeepsie, NY. However, head coach John Szefc is all too familiar with the private college, having coached the Red Foxes from 1996-2002.
“I haven’t worked there in 22 years,” Szefc said. “I don’t really have a connection. It’s been a long time.”
Fittingly, Szefc’s squad didn’t skip a beat coming off a weekend sweep of Notre Dame. They trounced the Red Foxes by 18 runs, extending the Hokies’ winning streak to four games.
The Hokies got off to a quick start in the bottom of the first inning, as Ben Watson singled in Carson DeMartini and Clay Grady for the first runs of the game. With this hit, the transfer from Elizabethtown extended his hitting streak to 11 games.
He wasn’t the only Hokie with an 11-game knock streak, however. Christian Martin also had a single and a double that drove in two RBIs, joining Watson for an 11-game hitting streak, as well.
The Hokies’ hitting was passed around like a jar of salt at the dinner table like on Tuesday. Seeming to be the magic number of the day, 11 Hokies registered a hit against Marist; six had multi-hit games.
The star of the show was catcher Henry Cooke in this matchup. The Stuarts Draft, Va., native totaled three extra-base hits, with two of them being home runs.
“Just see the ball hit the ball, really,” Cooke said about his approach. “That’s what I do pretty much every day. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
The catching unit was something to marvel at taking away from Tuesday’s game. The Tech catching unit (Cooke, David McCann and Gehrgi Ebel) got on base for a total of nine times in the contest, with Cooke and McCann splitting six hits and contributing five extra-base hits together. Cooke appreciated the versatility and inevitability of how this unit comes to play every day.
“It’s probably one of the most fun teams I’ve ever been on and the most talented team I’ve ever been on,” Cooke said. “Everybody can do anything. Having Gehrig (Ebel) and (David) McCann, you know if one of us doesn’t do good then the other one will do good.”
The rout surely jumped up during the second and third innings. Two out of the three players with multi-homer games, Cooke and DeMartini hit home runs in those innings. McCann and Eddie Micheletti joined in on the dinger fun as well, giving the Hokies six home runs in just the first three innings. Szefc was surprised at what his squad did on Tuesday.
“It was that many?” Szefc said. “These guys, they compete. All the at-bats mean something, they’re not just throwaways. I’ll give them credit, those guys, they earned the at-bats and they wanna be productive, and they were.”
The rout wouldn’t stop there. After a 13-0 start, Tech would go on to add two more homers and seven more runs spread out across five more frames of hitting. Szefc started putting in some of the younger players since the lead was getting sizeable, as a result.
Enter Jake Slade, a freshman out of Purcellville, Va., who supplied those final two home runs. He made the most out of his two at-bats, turning his second and third collegiate career hits into his first and second collegiate career four-baggers. Slade felt great after his big day.
“It felt awesome,” Slade said. “Kind of numb in the moment. Wasn’t expecting the fist, wasn’t expecting the second, but it happened and I’m thankful for that. It’s a memory that I’ll get to hold on to, so it’s special.”
A ballgame can’t turn into a blowout based on just hitting, though. Tech’s pitching squad, despite some command troubles early on, only allowed two earned on seven hits. They registered nine strikeouts, a third of those coming from only an inning and a third of work from freshman right-hander Preston Crowl who impressed Szefc.
“He looked good,” Szefc said. “He just needs to pitch. He came in and did a good job. He kinda ran out of gas a little bit there because he hasn’t pitched a whole lot. In general, he was pretty good. He came in with the bases loaded, too, and got a strikeout.”
The cherry on top came during the bottom of the eighth inning. With Szefc subbing in much of the younger group due to the blowout, an extremely rare occurrence dawned upon English Field. Since all available hitters had been subbed in, a pitcher was set to bat.
Ryan Buckler, a freshman righty from Marstons Mills, Mass., got the chance of a lifetime to hit during a collegiate game. His teammates recognized this and were going berserk in the dugout in hopes of him reaching base. He popped out to right field, but the occurrence brought the team to their feet collectively. His teammate, Slade, mentioned the last time he had hit was middle school.
“When you get to just sit back and relax and watch somebody who doesn’t get to hit go in there and do decent; catching up to a 90-mph fastball is fun,” Slade said. “We have a good group of guys, and we just rally around that.”
In a game filled with season-highs, Tech did this without key hitters Chris Cannizzaro and Garrett Michel which was impressive. The demonstration of versatility of this Hokie squad was surely shown after putting up a 20-spot.
The Hokies will now take a four-game winning streak to Louisville, Ky., to play a weekend series against the Cardinals.
Meanwhile, the Red Foxes travel farther southwest in Virginia to Radford, to take on the Highlanders this weekend.