Baseball: Hawks sweep Drury at home

The Rockhurst Hawks threw back-to-back shutouts against Drury at home on Sunday to complete a four-game weekend sweep over the Panthers. Junior left-hander Josh Tols held Drury to two hits in a 1-0 win in the first game. In the Hawks' 4-0 win in the second game, Mark Himmelberg and Josh Samuelson combined on a nine-hit shutout.

T.J. Dailey singled home the winning run in the fifth inning in the opener. Scott Bradbury and Ryan Porter opened the inning with singles. Tols struck out six in moving his record to 6-2. Patrick Chandler preserved the shutout with a spectacular running catch in right-center field in the seventh with the tying run on second base.

In the second game, Bradbury gave the Hawks a 2-0 lead with an RBI single in the third. The Hawks added two more runs in the eighth on singles from Jonathan Curtis and Josh Samuelson. Himmelberg (5-2) pitched the first five innings. Samuelson threw the final four innings to get his third save.

On Saturday, the Hawks swept Drury behind a pair of game-winning hits from Chandler. Rockhurst won the first game, 6-5, when Chandler singled home the tying and winning runs in the bottom of the eighth inning. The Hawks rallied from a 5-0 deficit to score four runs in the seventh highlighted by a two-run double from Bradbury. Bradbury went 3-for-5 to lead the Hawks’ 11-hit attack. Jordan Stull and Derrick Jones both collected two hits. Reliever Nick Lichtenberger (3-3) picked up the win.

In Rockhurst’s 4-3 win in the second game, Chandler drove in the winning run with a ground-rule double in the fifth. Bradbury’s two-run homer cut Drury’s lead to 3-2 in the third. Mark Sappington held Drury to one earned run in improving his record to 7-2 and lowering his ERA to 1.80.

The Hawks, 26-13 and 17-9 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference, host Washburn Wednesday at 6 p.m.