Baseball team comes back to beat Broward in 10 innings

The Eastern Florida State College baseball team rallied back to beat Broward College 5-3 in 10 innings on the road Wednesday night.

Down 3-0 in the eighth inning, Austin Bates and Alvaro Valdez scored on an error to cut the lead to 3-2. While the Titans could not tie the game in the eighth, they did in the ninth inning as JD Stubbs hit a single and pinch runner Toshawn Drew scored on an error to tie the game.

Then in the top of the 10^th inning, Valdez crushed a double to centerfield that scored Bates to give the Titans a 4-3 lead. Valdez would later score on Collier Rutledge's single to make it 5-3. 

"It was probably the biggest win of the season truthfully," Eastern Florida State College baseball coach Jason Arnold said. "You are down 3-0 and their starter is still in. We put a couple things together and they throw one away to give us a little life. From there, the last two or three weeks of no big hits came back to us as we got big hit after big hit."

That was more than enough for Andres Rodriguez who picked up the win in relief. Rodriguez struck out four in two innings, allowing one hit. 

Carter Stewart got the start and was solid, allowing three runs in six innings, striking out eight. Rafael Acosta and Michael Entenza each had scoreless innings in relief as the Titans held Broward in check for most of the night.

"I can't say enough about the bullpen tonight and Carter was good, he just had a couple of bad pitches that they made him pay on," Arnold said. "But overall it was just a huge team win."

The win puts the Titans in position to lock up the No. 2 seed and host the Southern Conference Tournament on May 1 and 2. The series will head to Bruce Bochy Field on Friday night for Game 2 at 6 p.m.