Champ Central
CLEARWATER, Fla. – Chris Williams took a no-hitter into the seventh inning and Kam Gellinger went 3-for-4 as UCF took a 12-0 win against USF in an elimination game of the American Athletic Conference Baseball Championship Friday afternoon at Spectrum Field.
UCF (40-19), the top seed in The American Championship, advances to the semifinal round of the tournament for the first time. The Knights will face No. 8-seeded East Carolina Saturday at 1 p.m. and would need two wins against the Pirates to advance to Sunday’s final. USF (41-17) was eliminated from the tournament with its second loss.
Williams was nearly perfect in the early going as he faced one batter more than the minimum through the first seven and two-thirds innings. Following a one-out walk in the first inning, he retired the next 19 USF hitters before David Villar drew a two-out walk in the seventh. Coco Montes broke up the no-hitter with a double off the rightfield wall that put Bulls on second and third, but Williams retired the side with a strikeout to strand the runners.
Williams was nearly matched by USF starter Peter Strzelecki in the early going, as Strzelecki kept the Knights off the scoreboard through the first five innings.
The UCF bats came alive in the sixth, however, as Matthew Mika’s two-run double to left-center gave the Knights a 2-0 lead, Logan Heiser smacked a two-run home run to left to make it 5-0, and Brandon Bozeman delivered a two-run single to shallow center to make it 7-0.
UCF added two more on Ryan Crile’s two-run home run to right-center, which made it 9-0.
Williams worked eight innings and allowed two hits with seven strikeouts and two walks to improve to 5-3.
Gellinger was the offensive leader with three of the Knights’ 11 hits. The bottom third of UCF’s lineup accounted for seven RBIs as Crile had three and Mika and Heiser had two each.
Strzelecki took the loss for USF, falling to 3-4 after running into trouble in the in the sixth inning.
Tickets for the championship will be available at Spectrum Field each day of the tournament or may be purchased in advance by calling the box office at 727-467-4457. The latest information on the American Athletic Conference Baseball Championship is available on the conference’s Championship Central page at
www.TheAmerican.org/Baseball.