James Madison University’s baseball team lost to Virginia Tech by a score of 14-1 on April 28 in Blacksburg, Virginia. The game was played at English Field and ended after seven innings.
The loss brings the Dukes’ record to 18-25 for the season, while the Hokies improved to 23-20. Junior Ike Schmidly led James Madison at the plate, going two-for-three with an RBI.
Virginia Tech took control early in the game. In the first inning, three walks loaded the bases before Nick Locurto singled and drove in two runs. The Hokies added five more runs in the second inning, including a three-run home run by Ethan Ball.
James Madison scored its only run in the third inning when sophomore Reece Moody singled, stole his 30th base of the season, and then scored on Schmidly’s single. Virginia Tech continued to build its lead with additional runs in each subsequent inning.
Moody became just the third player in program history to steal 30 bases during a single season, joining T Riley and Rich Thompson who achieved that mark in 1999 and 2000 respectively. Moody now holds sole possession of fifth place for stolen bases in a JMU season and has extended his reached-base streak to seventeen games—the longest since Mike Mancini’s twenty-three-game streak toward the end of the 2024 season. Schmidly also strung together eight consecutive plate appearances reaching safely dating back to Sunday’s game against ULM.
Looking ahead, James Madison will return home for a three-game series against Marshall at Veterans Memorial Park from May 1 through May 3. The opening game is scheduled for Friday at six p.m.
