Box Score Box Score
Belton, TX – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor baseball team broke open a tight game with a three-run eighth inning and the Cru posted a 6-1 victory over Howard Payne University Friday afternoon in Belton. UMHB improves to 16-18 overall and 6-10 in American Southwest Conference West Division play with the victory. The loss drops the Yellow Jackets to 11-19 overall and 6-10 in the ASC West Division on the season.
Josh Fredrick's solo home run in the bottom of the first inning gave UMHB a 1-0 lead.
Reinaldo Araujo added an RBI single in the bottom of the second to make it 2-0 Cru. Howard Payne cut the lead to 2-1 on Taylor Zambreski's RBI single in the top of the third, but UMHB added a run on
Seth Lynn's RBI double in the bottom of the fourth to make it 3-1. It would stay that way into the bottom of the eighth before the Cru put the game out of reach with three more runs. Fredrick's sacrifice fly scored the first run and
Braden Embry and
Seth Mogavero added RBI's to take the lead to 6-1. HPU would get a two-out double in the top of the ninth, but could not push across a run.
Chance Ryan scattered nine hits over seven innings and allowed just one run to raise his record to 6-3 on the year.
Danny Horstman earned his third save of the year after pitching one a two-thirds innings of one-hit relief. Billy Ray Cruz took the loss for HPU to drop to 4-5 on the season. Fredrick, Mogavero and Lynn all had two hits apiece for UMHB in the victory. Jordan Hammontree had four hits for Howard Payne and Zambreski added three more.
The two teams will close out the regular season with a 12:00 PM doubleheader tomorrow at Red Murff Field. UMHB will then travel to Alpine to close out the regular season with a three-game, ASC West Division series at Sul Ross State University next week.
