ROLLA, Mo. – Missouri S&T's baseball team finally got a chance to play at home Saturday and celebrated the occasion by matching the second-largest run output in a game in school history in a 21-11 win over Wisconsin-Parkside.

 

The Miners also led the second game of the Great Lakes Valley Conference doubleheader with the Rangers 5-4 over five innings before it was suspended due to darkness. The game will be picked up in the sixth inning at 2 p.m. Monday.

 

After spotting the Rangers a run in the first inning, the Miners took the lead for good with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the inning. Brandon Cogan (Missouri City, Texas/Hightower) drew a leadoff walk and Hunter Scheib (Lawrence, Kan./Free State) followed with a double, then Will Morrison (Rolla, Mo./Rolla) brought home Cogan with a sacrifice fly. Ben Pieper (O'Fallon, Mo./St. Dominic) followed with an RBI single to plate Scheib.

 

The Miners, who scored in six of the seven innings of game one, put three more runs on the board in the second on an RBI triple by Zac Helton (Ballwin, Mo./Marquette), a single by Cogan that scored Helton and a solo home run by Scheib.

 

UW-Parkside cut the lead to one on a two-out, three-run homer off the bat of Dave Lojeski, but the Miners broke loose for six runs in the fourth – with the entire outburst coming after the first two hitters were retired.

 

Back-to-back singles by Scheib and Morrison started the rally, then Pieper walked to load the bases and Matt Kempin (Wichita, Kan./Trinity Academy) drew a walk to force in a run. Zach Carter (Perkins, Okla./Perkins-Tryon) greeted UWP reliever Joel Bergmann with an infield single that scored another run, then Sam Adams (Forsyth, Mo./Forsyth) followed with a single to the opposite field to bring in two more runs.

 

Helton completed the rally with his second triple of the contest, which tied an S&T single-game record, to drive in the last two runs of the inning.

 

The Miners added two more in the fifth on a two-run homer by Pieper and two in the sixth before the Rangers, who scored three in the fifth themselves, scored four times in the seventh to get to within 15-11.

 

However, S&T ended the game with six more runs in the seventh as the Miners sent 10 hitters to the plate for the second inning in the contest. In that inning, the Miners got triples from Pieper – who drove in his fourth run of the game in the process – and Carter to break a single-game mark with four triples.

 

The Miners' last four runs of the inning all came home on walks with the bases loaded as Ranger pitchers walked 12 S&T hitters in the game.

 

S&T had 18 hits in the opener, with five players – Scheib, Morrison, Pieper, Carter and Adams all having three apiece. Pieper and Helton each drove in four runs.

 

Caleb Lambert (Romulus, Mich./Inter-City Baptist) pitched the first five innings to pick up his first victory of the season.

The only game in which a Miner team scored more than 21 runs came in 1995, when S&T posted 27 runs in a win over Webster.

 

In game two, the Rangers scored single runs in each of the first four innings to take a 4-1 lead, but the Miners tied the game in the bottom of the fourth thanks in part to two errors by UW-Parkside in the inning. S&T took the lead in the bottom of the fifth on an RBI single by Carter after Kempin had tripled with two outs.