April 26, 2006
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue Boilermakers found their offense on Wednesday against Valparaiso, and that offense found the plate in every inning as Purdue rolled to a 13-4 win over the Crusaders at Lambert Field.
Mitch Hilligoss was a perfect 5-5 at the plate, raising his Big Ten-leading batting average to .424, and John Cummins drove in a season and career-high four runs in the win. Overall, nine Boilermakers amassed 17 hits against five Valpo pitchers.
On the mound for Purdue, Allan Donato improved to 2-0 on the season with 5.0 innings of work in his fifth start of the season. The sophomore allowed one run and three hits while striking out three.
The Crusaders scored the game's initial run, a single score in the top of the first inning on an RBI single to left by Colin Reynolds.
Purdue tied the game in the bottom of the first, grabbed the lead in the second and never looked back.
Eric Wolfe's single up the middle in the first scored Hilligoss, who doubled leading off the inning, to knot the score at 1-1. In the second, an RBI ground out by Dane Wolfe to plate Alex Jaffee for Purdue's 2-1 lead.
Another single Boilermaker run crossed the plate in the third on Neal Gorka's two-out single up the middle. John Hunter was hit by a pitch with no one on and two down in the inning, and was followed by a single by Ryne White to set up Gorka's base hit.
The contest was blown open in the fourth when Purdue sent nine batters to plate, scoring five runs. Cummins tripled to centerfield with the bases loaded to make the score 6-1, and then scampered home on a wild pitch by reliever Nick Mazzone. With two outs in the inning, White turned on a 1-0 offering from Mazzone and launched the baseball deep over the right field wall for a solo home run, his fifth of the season.
Purdue added two more runs in the fifth inning, both with two outs. After a double play emptied the bases, Hilligoss tripled into the left field corner and scored on a bloop double to center by Cummins. Eric Wolfe's single through the right side of the infield drove in Cummins with Purdue's 10th run of the game.
Valpo scratched across a run in the sixth inning against Boilermaker southpaw Eric Van Matre on a Josh Piazza sacrifice fly to right.
Purdue added single runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings to build its lead to 13-2. An RBI single by Hilligoss in the sixth drove in Jeff Mojzik, Dan Stahl scored in the seventh on a base hit by Alex Jaffee, and Stahl added an RBI in the eighth with a run-scoring single that drove in Kyle Lauderdale.
The Crusaders scored twice in the final inning against Purdue reliever Morgan Regan, but it wasn't nearly enough.
With the win, Purdue improved to 22-15 while Valpo slipped to 11-23.
Hilligoss' five hits on Wednesday give the Boilermaker All-American junior 202 hits in his career, making him the 13th Boilermaker to reach the 200-hit plateau in the program's 119-year history. Eric Wolfe will be the next to join the elite club. The senior first baseman enters this weekend's Big Ten series at Ohio State with 197 career hits.
Purdue travels to Columbus on Friday to face Ohio State in the first game of a four-game series at Bill Davis Stadium. The series opener is slated for a 6:35 p.m. first pitch.
The complete OSU series can be heard on AM 1410 WLAS in the Lafayette area, and on the worldwide web at www.purduesports.com. Mark Leddy and Chris Macaluso will call all the action in the Boilermakers' conference series.