Box Score 1 | Box Score 2

AUBURNDALE, Florida – Nobody can accuse the Rutgers University-Camden baseball team from ducking the top competition in the country.
 
The Scarlet Raptors have opened their season facing five consecutive opponents ranked in the national polls, and they saw a pair of them here Tuesday in the RussMatt Florida Central Invitational. The Scarlet Raptors lost, 11-4, against Wisconsin-Stevens Point in the afternoon and followed that with a 3-2 loss to Birmingham Southern at night.
 
Rutgers-Camden, which also has played two games against Amherst (pre-season No. 23 in the ABCA/Collegiate Baseball  poll) and Cortland State (currently No. 3 in the D3baseball.com rankings),  falls to 2-3 through its first five games.
 
Rutgers-Camden's schedule at the RussMatt Florida Central Invitational continues tomorrow, when the Scarlet Raptors play a 3:30 p.m. game in Winter Haven, Florida. They will face Bowdoin College, a team from Brunswick, Maine. Later in the week, the Raptors face top-ranked and defending national champion Wisconsin-Whitewater and also face Trinity (CT) College, which received votes this week toward the D3baseball.com poll.
  
The Pointers, 4-2 and currently ranked No. 13 in the D3baseball.com Top 25 poll after holding down the No. 10 ranking last week, produced back-to-back three-run innings in the sixth and seventh to break open a 4-4 game. Stevens Point used two hit batsmen, three hits and an error in the sixth inning as it took the lead for good. The tie-breaking run came home on a sacrifice fly by senior first baseman Kyle McHugh (Polonia, WI/Rosholt), who went 2-for-4 with three RBIs in the game.
 
Wisconsin-Stevens Point scored four runs – three of them unearned – in the bottom of the first inning, but Rutgers-Camden countered in the fifth with four runs of its own to tie the game. All of them were unearned, as the Pointers made five errors in the frame. The lone hit in the inning was a RBI double by senior center fielder Bobby Romano (Vineland, NJ/Vineland), who ended up with two doubles in the game to account for two-thirds of the Raptors' total hits.
 
Senior third baseman Taylor Carlson (Madison, WI/LaFollette) and senior shortstop Riley Spetz (Sturgeon Bay, WI/Sevastopol) both had three hits in the Pointers' 15-hit attack.
  
The Scarlet Raptors' rugged schedule continued with a tight loss Tuesday evening against Birmingham Southern, the fifth-ranked team in the D3baseball.com poll, which raised its record to 16-1.
 
The Panthers scored a single run in the third inning on a double steal and added a solo home run in the fourth by sophomore right fielder Jack Rhodes (Nashville, TN/Montgomery Bell).
 
Rutgers-Camden cut the gap to 2-1 in the sixth when sophomore catcher Jon Theckston (Gloucester City, NJ/Gloucester Catholic) singled home junior designated hitter Joe Sigismondi (Blackwood, NJ/Highland Regional), who had reached on a passed ball on a strikeout.
 
Birmingham Southern, however, added a big insurance run in the eighth on a RBI single by senior first baseman David Bourbonnais (Atlanta, GA/Marist). Bourbonnais later pitched the ninth inning, allowing one run on a RBI ground out by Sigismondi before nailing down his third save.
 
Theckston and sophomore second baseman Joe Brooks (Blackwood, NJ/Gloucester Catholic) each had two hits for the Scarlet Raptors.
 
Junior transfer Ryan Sullivan (Livingston, NJ/Livingston), making the first start of his Rutgers-Camden career, was the tough-luck losing pitcher. He worked six innings, allowing five hits, two earned runs and two walks. He struck out eight.