Box Score

BALTIMORE – Senior Mike Backus drilled a pair of home runs to set or tie a pair of school records, but the Gettysburg College baseball team lost 9-5 in a slugfest at nationally-ranked Johns Hopkins University in Centennial Conference action at Blue Jay Diamond Sunday afternoon.

Gettysburg (11-15, 3-9 CC) and the Blue Jays (25-3, 12-0 CC), ranked No. 4 by the American Baseball Coaches Association and No. 10 by D3baseball.com, combined for seven home runs, with the Bullets belting a season-high three long balls. Senior Kevin Langhauser also went deep as the Bullets scored all of their runs on homers.

Backus finished 2-for-4 with two runs and three RBIs. His two home runs tied a school record and gave him seven for the season, a new Gettysburg record. Backus now owns or shares Gettysburg records for home runs in a game (two, tied), season (seven), and career (16). 

It was the first career multi-homer game for Backus and the first by a Bullet since Kevin McCarville hit two against Lebanon Valley on April 27 of last season.

Langhauser went 2-for-4 with two RBIs while sophomore Drew Roy and freshman Pat Cody each finished 2-for-4. Cody finished an outstanding weekend 9-for-16 over four games to continue his fine season.

Junior Matt Karis started for the Bullets and went 6 1/3 innings. Karis (3-3) allowed all nine Hopkins runs (six earned) on 11 hits. He did not walk a batter and struck out seven.

Marco Simmons (4-1) threw the first five innings to pick up the win for the Blue Jays, yielding four runs on seven hits. Andrew Pevsner held the Bullets to one run in three innings before Ryan Scherich hurled a scoreless ninth.

Chris Huisman finished 3-for-5 with a homer and three runs for Hopkins, which won its 18th game in a row.

Matthew Bernardi led off the bottom of the first with a homer for the Blue Jays, who went up 2-0 after a sacrifice fly later in the inning. But Gettysburg took a 4-2 advantage with a four-run third on a pair of two-run homers from Langhauser and Backus.

Johns Hopkins tied it with two in the bottom of the inning in which it smacked another leadoff homer, this one coming off the bat of Huisman.

The Blue Jays went ahead to stay with a three-run, three-hit fifth that was aided by an error, resulting in a pair of unearned runs. Huisman ripped a one-out double before scoring the go-ahead run on the error.

The Bullets plated their final run in the sixth, when Backus greeted Pevsner with a solo shot to right, making it 7-5. But Pevsner settled in from there, allowing only a pair of walks over the next three innings.

Hopkins tacked on a pairof insurance runs with solo homers in the sixth and seventh before sophomore Michael Odierna came on to shut out the Jays over the final 1 2/3 innings.

Gettysburg continues Centennial Conference play on Tuesday, when it visits McDaniel College at 3:30 p.m.