BELTON, Texas – Down to its last strike, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor baseball team used a dramatic home run to force extra innings, but another late comeback bid fell just short as the Cru dropped both ends of a doubleheader to Louisiana College Friday night in Belton. The Wildcats won game one 10-2 and took game two 7-6 in 11 innings.
Mitch Patterson's two-out, two-strike solo homer sent game two to extra innings but LC would hold off another rally for a 7-6 victory in 11 innings. The Wildcats grabbed a 2-0 lead in the top of the first before Garrett Gonzales' RBI double cut it to 2-1 in the bottom of the second. Mark Frankhouser doubled home a run and scored on Jeb Zolman's sacrifice bunt to give UMHB a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the third. A RBI single and squeeze bunt put the Wildcats back up 4-3 in the fifth, but the Cru answered with Landon Dieterich's sacrifice fly in the bottom of the sixth. LC took a 5-4 lead in the top of the seventh before Patterson's blast over the left field wall tied the game in the bottom of the ninth. Back-to-back RBI singles from Sully Martin and Deauton Delgado made it 7-5 Louisiana College in the top of the 11th. Another Dietrich sacrifice fly would close the gap to 7-6 and put the tying run on third, but UMHB could not push across another run. Evan Samoff and Connor Heussner combined to strike out 10 LC batters while Heussner taking the loss to drop to 1-2. Tyler Atkins picked up the win for the Wildcats and Delgado led the Louisiana College offense with four hits in the game.
Louisiana College put up seven runs in the fourth and fifth innings on the way to a 10-2 victory in game one. Duncan Cornfoot's two-run double gave the Wildcats a 2-0 lead in the top of the first. LC took advantage of three hits and an error to put four on the board in the fourth to stretch it to 6-0. Zolman blasted a two-run homer in the bottom of the fourth to close the gap to 6-2. Zane Corbell answered with a three-run homer in the top of the fifth and LC added another run in the sixth to take it out to the final margin. Casey Frazier took the loss for the Cru to drop to 1-1. Blayne Haro threw a complete-game three-hitter for the Wildcats to improve to 2-1. Brady Atkins had four hits and Delgado and Steven Pizaro added three hits apiece as LC pounded out 15 hits in the contest.
The Cru is now 4-9 overall and 2-3 in American Southwest Conference play on the season. Louisiana College moves to 11-2 overall and 3-2 in the ASC with the two wins. The two teams will close out the series with a 1:00 PM single game on Saturday. UMHB will then play six games in a five-day span over Spring Break next week.
