Pitt baseball team sits atop Big East after sweep over St. John's

Pitt's baseball team started the season with a non-conference sweep of Wichita State about a month ago. This past weekend, they started their Big East season off with a sweep over last year's champ, St. John's.

The 3-0 start in conference has Pitt atop the conference along with South Florida, who swept Cincinnati. The three straight wins have also propelled the Panthers to the second best overall record in the Big East at 15-6.

It sounds like a broken record at this point, but Pitt's offense was again on display. The team scored 37 runs in the series, averaging nearly 13 per game. Despite the runs, though, Pitt hit only two home runs over the weekend. One of those was by Steven Shelinsky, who now has a team-high seven on the season. Outfielder Steven Vranka helped lead the way with six hits and Casey Roche had five while pushing his hitting streak to ten games.

The pitching struggled in the first game, giving up nine runs, but rebounded allowing only four over the final two games. Matt Wotherspoon pitched his second complete game of the season and picked up his fourth win on Saturday, and on Sunday, Rhys Aldenhoven went seven innings, giving up two runs (and only one earned) to remain undefeated on the season (4-0).

You can get the full box scores here.

The sweep was really better than Pitt fans could have hoped for. Winning two on the road in the first Big East series of the year would have been a victory, but grabbing all three is even better. As coach Joe Jordano said afterwards, there's still a long way to go. But Pitt is off to a remarkable start so far.

Pitt next takes on Penn State on Wednesday in State College before taking on Towson in a weekend series at home.

Be sure to join Cardiac Hill's Facebook page and follow us on Twitter @PittPantherBlog for our regular updates on Pitt athletics.