AUGUSTA, Ga. – The Benedict College Tigers dropped a pair of games to Paine College in a SIAC baseball doubleheader on Saturday afternoon.

Paine jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the first inning of the first game and went on to take a 16-5 victory. Paine had an early 11-1 lead in the second game and held off a Benedict rally to take an 11-9 victory in the second game. Benedict falls to 16-14 overall and 7-7 in the SIAC. Paine improves to 15-16 overall and 8-6 in the SIAC.

Christopher Harper went 2-for-3 with an RBI in the first game to lead the Tigers, who had just seven hits. Armando Valentin and David White Jr. each had one hit and one RBI. The Tigers committed five errors in the first game.

In the second game, Benedict struck first with a run in the top of the second when Joseph Macaluso led off with a double, advanced on a wild pitch and scored on a groundout by Harper. The Lions scored five runs in the  bottom of the second to take the lead. Paine added six runs in the third inning for an 11-1 lead.

Javier Santiago drove in three runs with a bases-loaded double in the fourth. Santiago later scored on a sacrifice fly by Andrew McCoy to cut the lead to 11-5. Myles Snype added a RBI single in the fifth. In the sixth, Benedict got two more runs as Valentin drove home a run on a sacrifice fly and McCoy scored on a wild pitch. McCoy had a two-out single in the seventh inning to bring home another run to cut the lead to 11-9, but Valentin popped up for the final out and end Benedict's rally.

The Tigers and Lions will meet up for the third game in the series on Monday at 1 p.m.