DAVENPORT, Fla. – The University of Minnesota Morris baseball team took a pair of losses on Saturday as the Cougars opened up their trip to Florida at the RussMatt Invitational with defeats against Gwynedd Mercy University and Fitchburg State University. The Griffins pulled away late in the contest for an 11-1 win in eight innings in the opener before a flurry of late runs from both teams resulted in an 8-6 victory for the Falcons in the nightcap. UMN Morris drops to 2-4 overall on the season.

Action continues in Davenport, Fla. on Sunday with a single contest against the University of Wisconsin-Stout beginning at 3 p.m. (4 p.m. EDT).

Gwynedd Mercy 11, Minnesota Morris 1 (8 innings)
The trip to Florida started well for Minnesota Morris when Ben Meuser started the top of the second inning with an inside-the-park home run to put the Cougars on top. Gwynedd Mercy answered with a solo shot of its own in the bottom of the inning to level the score and errors played a major role after that, with UMN Morris pitching only being charged for six earned runs among the 11 scored by the Griffins.

Gwynedd Mercy took the lead with two runs scoring on an error in the third inning and another in the fourth to grab a 4-1 advantage. Breckin Silvain (0-1) ultimately went 5.0 inning and struck out eight with just two earned runs allowed among the four scored, but was charged with the loss.

The sixth inning is when the Griffins began to pull away. A combination of three hits, an error, and a passed ball all contributed to a four-run inning that left Minnesota Morris in an 8-1 hole. After three runners were stranded in scoring position for the Cougars in the seventh and the eighth, Gwynedd Mercy put the game to bed in the bottom of the eighth by scoring three times. With the bases loaded, Sam Junker worked a walk to force a run in. The game ended on a walk-off double that increased the margin to 10 runs as two more runs came home.

Fitchburg State 8, Minnesota Morris 6
Minnesota Morris took an early lead once again in the day's second contest, putting single runs on the board in the second and third innings. A Landen Meyerdirk lead-off triple in the second inning turned into a 1-0 lead courtesy of a RBI single from James Nelson. David Steffen started the third inning with a double and later scored on a Ben Meuser fielder's choice grounder.

Fitchburg State struck back with two runs in the top of the fourth to knot the score and took the lead in the top of the fifth. The Falcons maintained their 3-2 advantage all the way until the bottom of the eighth. Ethan Schmitz began the Minnesota Morris half of the inning with a walk and then stole second. Following a sac bunt from Ashton Pauly to move him to third, Meyerdirk doubled Schmitz home to tie the game at 3-3 heading into the ninth.
The low-scoring contest changed dramatically in the final frame. Fitchburg State had six hits in the ninth and a Cougar error also contributed to five Falcon runs as it turned into a commanding 8-3 lead for FSU. The Falcons would turn out to need almost all of those insurance runs. Walks to Owen Dylong and Steffen along with an error that put Tyler Moriarty aboard loaded the bases and Meuser was hit by a pitch to push one run home. With two down, Pauly walked another run in and a second Fitchburg State error in the inning kept things alive as one more run came in to make it 8-6. With the tying run in scoring position, the Falcons were able to record a strikeout to close things out.

Ryan McGie threw 6.0 innings and struck out eight while receiving a no-decision in the game. Josh Osten (0-2) threw 2.2 innings but took the loss after things got away in the ninth. Meyerdirk had two hits for the Cougars.