ST. PAUL, Minn. – The University of Minnesota Morris baseball team lost twice in non-conference competition on Saturday night at the University of Northwestern. The Eagles won the contests by scores of 9-5 and 15-1 to drop the Cougars to 2-8 overall on the season.

After having the planned start of UMAC play this weekend postponed, Minnesota Morris is now slated to open UMAC play at home on Wednesday with a doubleheader against Martin Luther College at Chizek Field starting at 1:30 p.m.

Game One: Northwestern 9, Minnesota Morris 5
Trailing 5-0 after three innings, Minnesota Morris had its attempted comeback fall short in the first game of the day. Tyler Carper went 6.0 innings and took the loss on the hill for the Cougars to fall to 0-2 on the season.

Northwestern put two runs on the board in the bottom of the first, helped by an error in the inning from the Cougars. Another error in the third inning came back to bite UMN Morris when Sam Peterson homered to make it 4-0. The inning was still alive later on because of that error when a sac fly brought home another run to increase the UNW edge to 5-0.

Minnesota Morris began to close the gap in the fourth inning. Evan Benson and Josh Doss led off with back-to-back singles. With one out, they were driven home by a double from Julien Shadle to slice the deficit to 5-2. The Cougars pulled another run back in the fifth when Joe Pelle led off with a single and was then doubled home from second base on a hit from Logan Graves.

Northwestern and UMN Morris traded runs after that, with a sac fly from the Eagles canceled out by a solo shot off the bat of Shadle, leaving the score at 6-4 after six. That would be as close as the Cougars would get though. Northwestern tacked on an important pair of insurance runs in the bottom of the seventh and one more in the eighth. Trailing 9-4 going to the top of the ninth, Pelle led off for the Cougars with a triple and he would eventually score, but it was not enough.

Pelle was 3-for-4 with two runs scored on the day, while Shadle went 2-for-3 with three RBIs.

Game Two: Northwestern 15, Minnesota Morris 1 (7 innings)
After trading runs early in the second contest, things went south quickly for Minnesota Morris starting in the bottom of the third inning. A two-run homer from Keegan Vercoe put the Eagles up for good and UNW would go on to score five runs in the third, two in both the fourth and the fifth, and five more in the sixth to close it out. Graves fell to 1-2 on the year, taking the loss on the mound.

The run came for Minnesota Morris in the top of the second inning. Branden Carlson doubled to lead off the inning and stole third with one down. From there, a Blake Haugen single brought him home to tie the score at 1-1.

Northwestern took the lead back on Vercoe's homer in the bottom of the third, the second of six hits for the Eagles in the frame to take a 6-1 lead. The Eagles added a couple more in the fourth inning and Peterson homered again for UNW in the fifth to make it 10-1. Three walks and three hits in the sixth accounted for the rest of the Eagle runs.

Alex Baumann, Carper, Benson, Carlson, and Haugen all had hits in the game for the Cougars.