Box Score (PDF)

ORLANDO, Fla. — The baseball team had three times as many hits as UCF on Friday night, but the host Knights ultimately emerged with a 4-3 victory at Jay Bergman Field. Junior Tommy Wagner and sophomore Ellis Bitar were both 2-for-4 with an RBI for the Big Red, which outhit the Knights by a wide 9-3 margin.
 
Junior starter Paul Balestrieri worked six strong innings for Cornell (6-5). While he yielded four runs, just two were earned as a result of three Big Red errors. The first run came in the first inning after a pair of walks. The first free pass was negated by a double play, but the second set the table for a two-out triple which deflected off a diving outfielder's glove and onto the warning track to plate the first run.
 
UCF (13-11) scored two unearned runs in unorthodox fashion in the fourth inning to stretch its lead. With the bases loaded and one out, Balestrieri had two strikes on a batter when catcher's inteference on a foul ball to force in a run. The next pitch was popped into left field for an easy sacrifice fly, and the Knights suddenly had a 3-0 lead.
 
Cornell started to claw back in the seventh inning, the final inning of work from frontline starter Cre Finfrock. Junior C.J. Price led off with a bloop single into left, then senior Jacob Weston chopped a ball over the third baseman's head to with one out. Junior Frankie Padulo pulled a grounder into the hole that deflected off the third baseman's glove to load the bases. Wagner followed that up by hitting a potential double-play to the third baseman, but his throw to first after stepping on the bag pulled the first baseman off the base and allowed Price to score Cornell's first run.
 
UCF restored its three-run lead when a pair of hit-by-pitches in the bottom of the seventh set the table for a sacrifice fly to score the hosts' fourth run — which turned out to be the winner.
 
Wickham hit a one-out bloop single in the eighth, then came around to score on Bitar's double into left-center. Senior Michael Byrne then worked a scoreless bottom of the eighth — lowlighted by a lengthy delay when the field's lights cut out — to keep the visitors' deficit at two runs.
 
Freshman Josh Arndt led off the ninth as a pinch hitter and reached on an error. Padulo followed with his second single of the night, putting the tying run on base. Wagner then dropped down a bunt up the first base line and ended up reaching safely when the throw came dislodged from the first baseman's glove on a bang-bang play at the base. The ball bounded up the line unbeknownst to the first baseman, and Arndt alertly came around to score to make the score 4-3.
 
But the threat was neutralized on the next pitch when another attempted bunt was popped up, snagged by the catcher and turned into a double play at first base. A groundout then ended the game with the tying run stranded at second.
 
With rain prominently in the forecast, the second game of the series has been moved up to 11 a.m. Saturday. Cornell will run out junior RHP Tim Willittes (2-1, 3.38) , the two-time reigning Ivy League Pitcher of the Week, against UCF RHP Robby Howell (4-0, 0.79).