Troy, NY - Two big innings were enough to send the Clarkson University Baseball team to a pair of losses against Rensselaer on Sunday afternoon, as the Golden Knights fell to 0-4 in Liberty League play with a 10-5 loss in the opener and a 17-8 defeat in game two at Robison Field.

The Golden Knights lost their sixth straight game, falling to 5-8 overall and 0-4 in conference, while 23rd-ranked Rensselaer improved to 11-1 overall and 4-0 in the Liberty League. Clarkson looks to recover next weekend at Union College.

In game one, junior pitcher Austin Pitkin (Dexter, NY) pitched well in all but one inning, as the Red Hawks posted eight runs on seven hits in the second frame to take an overwhelming advantage. Clarkson, as it has proven consistently through its first two weeks of the season, didn't sit passively by, however, scoring three times in the bottom of the second inning and two more times in the third. Unfortunately, the Clarkson bats fell silent in the final four trips to the plate, dropping the opener 10-5.

Clarkson junior Cale Giroux (Cortland, NY) went 4-for-4 with two runs scored, while classmate Matt Holiday (Syracuse, NY) hit his third home run of the season and added a double in a 2-for-4 performance at the plate in the first game.

The second game was a reincarnate of the first as the Knights and Red Hawks played even for the first two innings (2-2) before Rensselaer scored seven in the top of the third inning. RPI led 11-2 after three and a half innings, but Clarkson scored three in the bottom of the fourth to cut the Red Hawks lead to six as Holiday led off the inning with a triple and was followed by an RBI-double from Brady Torbitt (Fulton, NY) and a two-run bomb from Sean Griffin (Walden, NY), his first home run of the season and Clarkson's ninth in 13 games. Clarkson scored another in the fifth, but RPI scored six runs in its two final at bats to make the lead all but insurmountable. The Knights ended with two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning with RBIs from Mike Bresett (Norwood, NY) and Brett Peplowski (Albany, NY), but the team fell on the short end of the slugfest. 

Bresett went 2-for-5 in game two, extending his season-opening hitting streak to 13 games (a streak that actually pushes to 18 games including five contests from 2007). Peplowski and Holiday also went 2-for-5 and Griffin was 2-for-4 with three runs batted in, while Giroux finished a strong day by going 3-for-5 with two runs scored.