Ikenberry Picks Up 400th Career Win Behind Reifsnider’s Hot Bat at VMI

Sunday, March 14

Lexington, Va.

2 p.m.

James Madison University

3-6

VMI

3-8

James Madison

VMI

Ikenberry Picks Up 400th Career Win Behind Reifsnider’s Hot Bat at VMI

3/14/2021 6:41:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

LEXINGTON, Va. – James Madison baseball head coach Marlin Ikenberry won his 400^th career game and redshirt sophomore Travis Reifsnider had a career day at the plate to push JMU (3-6) pass VMI (3-8) by a score of 12-7 on Sunday afternoon at Gray-Minor Stadium.

Freshman Joe Vogatsky got the start for the Dukes, going two and a third innings and striking out three. Donovan Burke picked up his second win of the year and Lliam Grubbs earned his second save. Reifsnider lead the team offensively going 3-for-5 with three home runs, four runs scored, and five RBI's.

HOW IT HAPPENED
VMI opened the scoring first, pushing across two runs in the first and third innings to take an early 4-0 lead through three innings. JMU responded quickly in the fourth by batting around and scoring five runs to take the lead. Jensen Lapoint drove in a pair of runs on a double, before being followed three batters later by Josh Maguire and Bryce Safferwich who hit back-to-back RBI singles. Carson Bell hit a sacrifice fly to center to give JMU a 5-4 lead to finish out the fourth inning.

Reifsnider led off the fifth inning with his first home run of the game and was followed by Lapoint a batter later to push JMU's lead to 7-4. Reifsnider was then able to find his way back to the plate in the sixth inning, hitting his second home run to cap off a string of nine unanswered JMU runs to give the visitors a 9-4 lead. Burke threw three shutout innings during the scoring stretch, holding VMI to only two hits.

The Keydets cut back into the deficit in the seventh, scoring a pair of runs on an RBI single and then a wild pitch to make the score 9-6. Reifsnider answered the VMI scoring in the ninth inning though, hitting his third home run of the day to make it 11-6, and then Conor Hartigan added one more run on a single to push the score to 12-6. VMI picked up another run in the bottom of the ninth on a leadoff triple and wild pitch, but the game would end with a 12-7 final score.

GAME NOTES

Reifsnider is the first JMU player to hit three home runs since Brett Johnson against UNC Asheville on Feb. 25, 2017.
Reifsnider is the 11^th player in program history to hit three home runs in a game.
JMU leadoff batters went 5-for-9 during the contest.
The Dukes hit .417 (5-12) with runners in scoring position.
Burke set a new career-high in innings pitched, by throwing three and two-thirds innings. He had just set his previous career-high three days ago against VMI as well.

UP NEXT
James Madison opens up Colonial Athletic Association play as they travel for a three-game series against Elon on March 19-21 in Burlington, N.C. First pitch for game one is at 4 p.m.