On the heels of its best start in school history, the Roanoke College Baseball team has cracked the D3baseball.com/NCBWA Top 25 Poll.
The Maroons, who are 12-2 through Monday’s games, enter the poll at number 23. As of the latest NCAA Division III stat rankings released Monday morning, Roanoke is 18th in the nation in batting, hitting .361 as a team.
The Maroons are also third in DIII with 29 doubles, second in the nation with nine triples and sixth with 142 hits as a team. Roanoke’s 94 runs are eighth most in Division III.
Individually, Will Decker and Sean Guida rank 1-2 in the nation with five and four triples, respectively, on the season. On the mound, Matt Henderlite is tied for the most wins in the nation with four and closer Craig Kiley is tied for the lead nationally with four saves on the season.
Roanoke College’s John Ruhlman was named the Old Dominion Athletic Conference Pitcher of the Week on Monday. Ruhlman, a senior from Virginia Beach, Va., appeared twice for Roanoke and picked up a win and a save to help the Maroons to a 3-0 week overall. Ruhlman took the hill in relief against Ferrum and tossed three scoreless frames to pick up the save in a 9-5 win. He gave up one hit and fanned a pair.
Ruhlman came back four days later and went the distance in an 8-1 win over Susquehanna Saturday afternoon in the second game of a doubleheader sweep by RC. He surrendered one run on six hits with a walk and six strikeouts in a full nine innings of work. For the season, Ruhlman is 1-0 with one save. He owns a 3.67 ERA, having struck out 16 batters in 24.1 innings.
On Monday the Maroons opened a four game spring break road trip to Myrtle Beach with an 11-3 win over Summit College in day one of the Cal Ripken Experience.
After giving up a run in the first, Roanoke tied it up as Guida singled and stole two bases before Collier Donald recorded a sac fly to score Guida and make it a 1-1 game.
The Maroons tacked on six more runs in the second as RC drew seven walks with two more reaching on hit by pitch results. In his second at bat of the inning, Eli Sumpter recorded an RBI with a sac fly scoring Drew Mikula for a 7-1 lead. .
Matt Henderlite earned the win going 6.0 innings on the day to move to 4-0 on the season while Michael Mares went the final 3.0 for the Maroons giving up no runs.
The Maroons will play Lehman, Dean and Mt. Aloysius in the Ripken Experience event before returning to Salem to host Bridgewater in a doubleheader at Salem Memorial Ballpark Saturday. Games are at noon and 2:30 pm.
Next week RC will host Cortland State on Monday, Southern Virginia on Tuesday and Lynchburg College on Wednesday, all at 7 pm.