By: Tobey Schulman
NCAA Baseball Recap: FAU 5 – Tulane 0
After losing three straight games on their last road trip, FAU was finally back home to play some conference baseball. The Tulane Green Wave came into Boca Raton looking to improve upon their 5-7 AAC conference record. C.J. Williams and the Owls would have other plans for Tulane, and after a historic start from Williams, the Owls would’ve only needed one run to win the game, and turned it into five for a shutout series opening win.
A majority of the scoring for the Owls would come in the first three innings. In the second, Emilio Gonzalez tallied a sacrifice lineout to give FAU an early 1-0 lead. In the third, Brando Leroux would hit a three-run double that would break the score open and give the Owls a 4-0 lead. For safe measures, Andrew McKenna recorded an RBI single to give the Owls a 5-0 lead in the seventh.
While the Owls put together more than enough runs to win this game, they would’ve only needed a fifth of their total runs to win due to C.J. Williams’ dominant start. Williams would toss the Owls first complete game shutout since 2016.
He’d go the full nine innings, while only giving up five hits, one being an extra base hit, walking two, and striking out five in the process. A 111 pitch outing from Williams gave the Owls bullpen a much needed day off, and they now will most likely all be well rested going into the last two games of this series.
Williams put the entire team on his back Friday night yet again, lowering his ERA to 2.83 on the season. The Owls now have a 7-6 AAC conference record, and look to win the series Saturday with Tyler Murphy on the mound. They’ll face right hander Chandler Welch from Tulane, and hope to hand him his second loss of the season.
A series win and sweep could possibly give them a great position in the standings, only being behind UTSA and ECU. Murphy looks to build off of C.J.’s impressive performance last night, but the bullpen will be ready if needed in game two.