DELAND, Fla. – A marathon, back-and-forth affair became the latest chapter in a long line of wild ASUN Baseball Championship openers for #4 seed Jacksonville University baseball, who prevailed 12-11 over #3 Lipscomb in 10 innings in a game that wrapped up early Thursday morning.
 
JU (31-25) scored eight runs in the fifth to take the lead, then took the lead again for good in the top of the 10th to advance to the winner's bracket tomorrow vs. #2 Liberty at 7 p.m.
 
"I'm just really pleased with the way we competed the entire day and the way we came up in big spots," said Head Coach Chris Hayes. "Bottom line is, we had to make a pitch in a big spot, we had to get a hit in a big spot, and our guys were able to persevere, push through and get the job done."

 
Jacksonville started the 10th with a leadoff triple by Cory Heffron, who scored one pitch later on Cory Garrastazu's single past the infield in, and Zach Bryant picked up a two-out, full-count strikeout to strand the tying and winning runs on base and locked down his 12th save of the year.
 
Lipscomb jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the first, and after the Dolphins cut it two in the second, the Bisons built the lead back out to four, 6-2, after two.
 
It was 8-2 Lipscomb at the end of four, and runs had already scored for both teams in a variety of ways, including bases loaded walk, hit, sacrifice fly, wild pitch, bases loaded hit by pitch and a balk.
 
The biggest inning of the night was the fifth for JU, and John Cassala got it started with a ground ball to short that went right through the shortstop's legs for a leadoff error. With one out, Jacob Southern singled and Duncan Hunter walked to load the bases. Ruben Someillan lifted a sacrifice fly to right to get the scoring started. Heffron then popped up a ball to the pitcher that was dropped, scoring Southern and putting runners at second and third. Garrastazu hit a ground ball to the right side which led to another error when the pitcher was unable to locate the base, which plated another run and brought the tying run to the plate. Dakota Julylia ripped a hanging breaking ball to left to drive in two, and advanced to third on the throw, ending Lipscomb's starters day.
 
"They had our number early on, we were able to battle back, compete at the plate," said Julylia. "That's been a theme all year, just compete your butt off, execute your at-bats, execute your pitches, and that's how we got back in this game."
 
A wild pitch from the new pitcher brought Julylia in and tied it up at eight. Scott Dubrule walked and Cassala singled in his second time up in the inning to give JU its first lead of the night, thanks to two errors by the right fielder that let him aadvance to third before being driven in by Angel Camacho to complete the eight-run inning and put JU on top 10-8.
 
The Dolphins tacked on another run to lead by three in the sixth after Heffron singled and went to second on Garrastazu's sacrifice bunt, advancing to third on Julylia's groundout and scoring on another Cassala base hit.
 
The 11-8 lead held thanks to outstanding relief pitching from Jagger McCoy, who entered in the fifth, and held the Bisons scoreless over three innings in which he struck out five. His final strikeout after a leadoff double ended his outing after 3.1 innings, but Lipscomb of back-to-back walks by Trent Palmer to set up its game-tying rally in the eighth. An infield single and a throwing error brought in two runs, and another infield single tied it at 11. A strikeout by Palmer stranded the go-ahead run at third and set up the sophomore righthander to earn his fifth win of the season.

The game lasted four hours and 55 minutes, just 16 minutes shy of the longest game in ASUN Baseball Championship history. It is the third consecutive year that the Dolphins opened up the tournament with a win, all of them coming over Lipscomb.