ROLLA, Mo. – Missouri S&T will look to extend its season into the Great Lakes Valley Conference Baseball Tournament this weekend, as it completes its conference schedule with a four-game series against Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo.
The Miners and Hawks will play noon doubleheaders on both Saturday and Sunday, with the Miners looking to accumulate enough wins to land one of the eight playoff spots. S&T is currently one-half game in back of Drury for the second wildcard spot in the field, with the Panthers closing out their GLVC slate with four games at William Jewell this weekend.
S&T also has an eye on Missouri-St. Louis, the current owner of the first wildcard position, as the Tritons play a four-game at GLVC West Division leader Quincy this weekend, as well as several teams in the GLVC East Division who are jockeying for two of the three remaining automatic bids for the division (Indianapolis has already clinched the division title); the teams that don't earn a top-three spot will then land in the wildcard pool.
Missouri S&T is 17-15 in GLVC play and 23-22 overall heading into this weekend's set with Rockhurst, following an 11-10, 10-inning loss Tuesday at Southeast Missouri State. The Miners, who are second in the GLVC with a .308 team batting average, reached double figures in the run column for the 10
th time this season in Tuesday's contest as they rapped out 15 hits against the Division I Redhawks.
Tyler Johnson (Union, Mo./Union) continues to lead S&T with a .364 average, while
Trevor Karbowski (Standish, Mich./Sterling Central) is hitting .342 and leadoff hitter
Tyler Bodenstab (Independence, Mo./Truman) is at .328. The starting lineup employed by the Miners on Tuesday included six hitters who are above the .300 mark for the season.
Nick Ulrich (St. Louis, Mo./Vianney) leads the Miners with six home runs and is seventh in the league with 35 runs batted in, while
Lance Portwood (Edmond, Okla./Edmond Santa Fe) has driven in 30 runs on the year.
Reed Brown (Rogers, Ark./Heritage), who is among the six .300 hitters in the S&T lineup, hit his third home run of the season Tuesday.
Starting pitcher
Aaron Bedsworth (New Bloomfield, Mo./New Bloomfield) leads the S&T staff with five wins against three losses and owns a 3.28 earned run average with a team-high 45 strikeouts.
Micah Dohlen (Kent, Wash./Kent Lake) is 4-5 with a 4.55 ERA and 38 strikeouts, while
Keith Coulson (Chesterfield, Mo./Parkway Central) has a 4.93 ERA on the year.
Rockhurst dropped all four games of its series at Drury last weekend and comes into its final contests of the year at 19-27 overall and 10-20 in the GLVC.
The Hawks own a team earned run average of 5.04, a staff led by Grant Otte with a 3.38 ERA in 48 innings of work. Rockhurst's top four pitchers have accounted for 229 of the team's 366 innings – or 63 percent -- pitched this season.
Offensively, Brett Marr leads the Hawks with a .369 batting average and 33 runs batted in, while Caleb Baker is hitting .351 and Jake Jones is at .346. Matt Stacks is Rockhurst's leader in home runs with five and has driven home 32 for a team that is hitting .284 as a unit.
