Bucknell Baseball hosted Lehigh this weekend for an in-conference three-game slate across Saturday and Sunday. The Bison ended the series with a 2-1 record against their Patriot League foe.
Tyler O’Neill ’25 was on the mound for Bucknell in the first game on Saturday and pitched a complete game while striking out seven. O’Neill has now gone at least six innings and allowed three or fewer runs in each of his last five starts.
It was a defensive battle during the first game of the series, where Grant Voytovich ’24 and Billy Kender ’25 both made sensational catches on separate occasions to keep Lehigh scoreless with runners on base.
In the bottom of the third, the Bison got on the board 1-0 after Jacob Corson ’24 drove in Brady Karp ’25 with an infield single.
After the game remained tied 1-1 up until the sixth inning. The Orange and Blue finally got a run after a few consecutive balks by Lehigh pitchers drove in the go-ahead run to give Bucknell a 2-1 advantage. After giving up a leadoff single in the bottom of the seventh, O’Neill secured three straight outs to give the Bison the win.
The low-scoring affairs continued in game two on Saturday, as Jake Schultz ’27 allowed a single run in the first, but nothing else for the remainder of the game. Schultz pitched five innings, striking out five and allowing an unearned run on three hits.
Lehigh scored in the top of the first to go up 1-0, but the lead didn’t last long as Michael Trommer ’26 drove Kender in with an RBI single.
The game remained tied until the eighth inning, in which Lehigh reeled a two-run double that ended the game as Bucknell couldn’t score in the bottom of the eighth. Lehigh got the victory 3-1.
On Sunday, the two teams had one more matchup, one where Bucknell was dominant the entire way.
Bucknell scored five runs in the first to kick things off. The first five Bison to come up to bat reached base, and the team tallied three straight doubles from Voytovich, Corson and Trommer. Nic Adamo ’24 then hit a sacrifice fly to make it 5-0 after one.
Lehigh got on the board in the third inning from a Bucknell error that scored two, but it didn’t matter much. The Bison had another five-run inning after three in the second to go up 13-2 after three innings. The Orange and Blue then scored five more runs over the final four innings to send Lehigh packing with a final score of 18-8.
“I think the biggest thing was the intensity and focus preparing for this weekend, we knew it was going to be a huge weekend for us and we needed to be ready for it,” Trommer said. “Also, the offense hasn’t been getting the production we know we’re capable of and we knew it was just a matter of time before our offense came through.”
This was the season-high in runs for Bucknell, and it came on sixteen hits, nine hits off extra bases. Trommer had three doubles of his own and Corson and Chris Morabito ’27 both hit homers of over 400 feet.
Bucknell now sits at 15-20 for the season and 7-11 in conference play, and takes on Army next for a triple-header Saturday and Sunday on the road.
