MORRIS, Minn. – The University of Minnesota Morris baseball team battled back to extend the game to the ninth inning, but a rally from nine runs down against Crown College came up short on Wednesday night by a score of 11-7. The Cougars fall to 5-15 (3-7 UMAC), while Crown strengthens its grip on second place in the UMAC, improving to 15-18 (8-2 UMAC).
Wednesday's game was the completion of a doubleheader that started on Tuesday with a game at Crown before rain halted play prior to the start of game two. With field conditions still holding up play in St. Bonifacius, the contest was moved to Morris where the Cougars served as the visiting team. After a scoreless top of the first, Crown took the lead in the bottom of the first where Seth Betts smashed a solo homer for the second game running.
The Storm grew the lead to 3-0 in the bottom of the third when Kyle Schroedle smacked his first of two homers on the day. From there, a pair of Minnesota Morris errors kept the inning going and allowed three more Crown runs to score, making it 6-0 heading to the fourth.
A Betts sac fly and Schroedle's second home run made it 9-0 after four as
Brian Vanyo (2-4) had his day end with
Colin Lindgren coming on in relief. Minnesota Morris put up a run in the fifth inning on back-to-back doubles from
Julien Shadle and
Joe Pelle.
The lead was 10-1 for Crown going to the eighth inning when the Cougars began to climb back in it. With two on and two out, an error from Schroedle in right field brought
Tyler Carper home from second and a wild pitch later scored
Tyler Rowland to shrink the gap to 10-3.
Following a Crown run in the bottom of the eighth, Minnesota Morris got back to it in the ninth with four straight singles to start the inning. The third hit in that sequence from
Evan Benson scored
Alex Baumann and the fourth from
Noah Kloss reloaded the bases with no outs. A
Josh Doss double with one away brought two more runs home to slice it to 11-6. Later in the inning, a RBI fielder's choice from Rowland scored Kloss to make it 11-7. With two on and the tying run on deck, Crown was able to retire the side and close out the win.
Baumann, Shadle, and Doss all had two hits in the game for the Cougars. On in relief of Vanyo, Lindgren pitched the final 4.2 innings and gave up three runs while striking out three.
Minnesota Morris stays home on Saturday to take on Bethany Lutheran College in a doubleheader starting at 1:30 p.m.
