San Antonio - The second-ranked Trinity baseball team opened its Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference weekend with a doubleheader sweep of the University of Dallas Saturday at the Trinity University Baseball Field.

The Tigers shut out the Crusaders 8-0 in the first game, and won the second by a score of 5-3. Trinity now stands at 19-4 on the season, and 5-1 in the SCAC. Dallas dropped to 4-17 and 0-2. The two teams will complete their series with a single game on Sunday at 1:00 p.m.

Following the narrow victory in game two, Head Coach Tim Scannell was clear that he expects more from his team: "We have to play with energy. We have to play with desire. I don't like the mentality of our ball club. I think we are just going through the motions. I don't think we are respecting the game of baseball, and I don't think we respected our opponent today."

Despite that, Coach Scannell did see some bright spots: "I thought Nelson pitched a good ball game in game one, and I thought Hoffman was outstanding in relief in the second game. I think there is a lot of positive competitiveness in freshman Jake Martin. I thought he did a lot of small things today with his legs, and put the ball in play. I thought he was a difference-maker in that second game."

Trinity opened the first game with a four-run first inning, highlighted by a bases-clearing double from Jose Santos. The Tigers scored three more runs in the third - two of which came on a two-run triple from Nick Jewett - and finished off the scoring with a run in the fifth. 

Santos batted 2-2 with two doubles, and was the only Tiger player with multiple hits. Jewett, Carter McEachern, Jeremy Wolf, and Drew Butler scored two runs each for Trinity, while McEachern also had a pair of RBI in the win.

Troy Nelson improved his season record to 4-0, tossing five shutout innings without giving up a walk. He allowed just five hits, and struck out seven batters to help the Tigers to the shutout. Ian Hussian, Gianfranco Filippini, and Dylan McGee finished off the game in relief, allowing just two hits, and striking out five over the final four innings.

The Crusaders jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead after the first three innings of game two, but Trinity got on the board with a three-run third to take the lead for good.  The Tigers added to the lead with a run in the fourth, as Jake Martin stole second, then stole third, and scored on an errant throw to third base.  Dallas got back to within one after another score in the fifth, but the Tigers took advantage of another Crusader error to score again in the seventh.

Martin went 2-3 with three stolen bases in the second game, while McEachern had a pair of hits and two steals. Andrew Waters also connected for two hits in the game, and all three players went 3-6 combined in the two games.

"The first game, we got on top real quick, and I think that helped us save a little bit of pitching for the second game," said Martin after the wins. "In the second game, we didn't come out as hot, we came out kind of flat, and let them score runs first. We had to try hard to come back and put some runs together in the middle innings, to try to get the win. We played some really good defense at the end, and had some really good pitching from our staff. We defintely hit the ball a lot better than we have in some of the games in the past. It makes it a lot easier not having to rely on running to try to get the runs across."

Ryan Gray (4-3) was the starting pitcher for Saturday's finale, and lasted for 6.2 innings. Gray allowed two earned runs on five hits, and recorded five strikeouts. Andrew Hoffman finished off the game, and pitched 2.1 shutout innings to earn his first save of the season. Hoffman permitted only one hit, and struck out three batters.