ECBL: Rosewood remains perfect in 2 outings

By News-Argus Staff
Published in Sports on June 17, 2014 1:51 PM

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aetzler@newsargus.com

Rosewood is still getting into the swing of things in the Eastern Carolina Baseball League after an extended high school season.

Head coach Barry Bradley wants to make sure the kids are taking advantage of every opportunity to get better as their schedule begins to heat up.

So far, they're off to a good start.

The Eagles (2-0 overall) paid attention and made adjustments at the plate, and Jordan Gurley turned in a stellar pitching performance during an 8-1 win over Eastern Wayne on Monday evening.

"We had great plate approaches today," Bradley said. "That was the key for us. We've been working on that throughout the summer. When we got two strikes we were battling and making something happen. It was good all the way around."

Gurley completely shut down the Warriors after allowing an unearned run in the first inning. The Eagles battled out of trouble before the inning got worse.

A left-hander, Gurley cruised for the next six innings and retired five consecutive batters on strikeouts. He gave up just two hits and finished with 13 strikeouts for the game.

"I was able to keep my fastball down in the zone," Gurley said. "Once I'm doing that I can throw my curveball and they weren't able to hit it."

Putting the ball in play with two strikes was a point of emphasis for Bradley and part of the adjustments he wanted the team to make. They were able to do that, which allowed for them to take advantage of the Warriors miscues.

The Eagles' offense benefited from six errors by Eastern Wayne which resulted in three unearned runs off of starting pitcher Braxton Lewis. Lewis went 4 2/3 innings, giving up four hits, five earned runs and striking out six.

Andrew McKeel had two of the Warriors' three hits.

Gurley led the offense long with anchoring the team from the mound. He had two hits, an RBI sacrifce fly and scored a run.