After leaning on its pitching to earn a Centennial Conference playoff berth, the Muhlenberg baseball team turned to its bats for its final league game of the season.

The Mules (19-17, 11-7) rapped out a season-high 16 hits, including home runs by juniors Jon Capra and Chris Grillo, to defeat Ursinus and clinch the third seed in the CC playoffs. Muhlenberg will open play at second-seeded Johns Hopkins on Thursday before heading to top-seeded Swarthmore for the remainder of the tournament on Saturday.

The 11 conference wins tie a school record achieved four times previously, twice in the MAC South (1973 and 1979) and twice in the CC (2002 and 2008).

Capra went 4-for-5 with a career-high four RBI and was one of six Muhlenberg players with multiple hits. Sophomore John Serruto drove in three runs and went 2-for-3 to finish as the team's leading hitter in CC games with a .359 average.

The Mules opened up a 7-4 lead by scoring in each of the first four innings, with Capra hitting a two-run single in the first and a two-out RBI single in the second before leading off the fourth with his third home run of the season. The Bears (10-21-1, 5-12-1) rallied to tie the game in the top of the seventh.

The tie didn't last long, as Grillo hit a one-out home run in the bottom of the seventh. It was the third home run of the season for Grillo, who is hitting .537 over his last 11 games.

Muhlenberg added three important insurance runs in the bottom of the eighth on a bases-loaded walk and two-out, two-run single by Serruto.

Freshman Truman Devitt pitched the final two innings to earn his first career save. Freshman Alec Andrews struck out three in two innings of relief to pick up his third win of the season.

Senior Eric Reitmeyer (pictured above), junior Matt Riebesell, sophomore Brenden Weiss and freshman Robert Cappadona all had two hits.