Young delivers Monarchs to playoff victory
Having collected three significant individual awards this week as the starting second baseman for the Old Dominion Monarchs, Jared Young got back down team business on the ball diamond Wednesday in Biloxi, Miss.
With two swats of his bat Young helped the No. 2-seeded Monarchs to a 3-2 win over the seventh-seeded Florida International University Panthers NCAA Division 1 Conference USA playoffs.
The 21-year-old from Prince George stroked a double in the bottom of the fourth inning and later scored on a throwing error to give the Monarchs a 1-0 lead. Trailing 2-1 in the eighth inning, Young reached on a fielder’s choice and after an RBI single from Zach Rutherford left the bases loaded, Young walked in with the third run of the game to complete the comeback.
“Yeah we’ve been doing it all year,” said Monarchs head coach Chris Finwood, on the Conference USA website.
“I told our guys ‘we’ve got them right where we want them, down one in the eighth.’ We’ve had so many of those like that it doesn’t really surprise you. These guys are just built like that, they don’t ever quit.”
The Monarchs have come to depend on Young’s dependable hitting in his first season in the NCAA since he moved up from the junior college ranks. Young was selected Tuesday as the Conference USA newcomer of the year and earned first-team allconference honours.
The sports management major was also named to the Conference American all-academic team.
Heading into Wednesday’s game, Young was leading the Norfolk, Va.- based Monarchs with a .374 batting average, seven home runs and a 1.037 OPS (on-base-plus-slugging) total. He also tied for the team lead with nine stolen bases.
In 30 conference games Young hit .433, the highest batting average in league play since 2011.
The Monarchs finished second in the conference with a 19-11 record, their best season since 2006.
They won eight of their 10 regular-season series and are now 37-19 overall.
Thursday in Biloxi (2 p.m. PDT), Old Dominion will face No. 6-ranked Rice University, 5-3 winners Wednesday over No. 3 Florida Atlantic.
The game will be televised live on ESPN 3 and webcast on www. espn.com.
The top eight teams qualified for the Conference USA playoffs, a double-knockout tournament.
If the Monarchs win today they would have to win two more games on Saturday to advance to the single-knockout championship game.