ROLLA, Mo. - Following an opening weekend in which it swept all four games, Missouri S&T's baseball team will return to the home turf this weekend to host Minnesota-Crookston in a four-game series.
The Miners and Golden Eagles will play noon doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday at the Ballpark at S&T as the Miners will face a UMC team taking the field for the first time in the 2016 season.
S&T took two games from Lincoln and a pair from Southwest Baptist to open the season over the past weekend, which began with a two-hit complete game shutout by
Keith Coulson (Chesterfield, Mo./Parkway Central) against Lincoln that earned him the PNC "Player of the Week" award from the Great Lakes Valley Conference on Monday.
The offense took charge over the next three games as the Miners, who won the opener 1-0, scored 25 over the final three games to complete the weekend sweep. S&T hit .348 in the four weekend contests, with
Nick Ulrich (St. Louis, Mo./Vianney) going seven-of-15 in those games with a .933 slugging percentage and six runs batted in.
Lucas Swindle (Weldon Spring, Mo./Lutheran-St. Charles) drove in five runs and hit .500 while sharing the catching duties with
Justus Nelson (Plymouth, Minn./Robbinsdale Armstrong), who hit .400 himself in his two starts. Meanwhile,
Tyler Johnson (Union, Mo./Union) and
Tyler Bodenstab (Independence, Mo./Truman) had five hits apiece over the weekend while
Lance Portwood (Edmond, Okla./Edmond Santa Fe) had four.
Meanwhile, Miner pitchers held Lincoln and SBU to a .217 mark at the plate and struck out 38 hitters in 32 innings.
Aaron Bedsworth (New Bloomfield, Mo./New Bloomfield) and
Mack Preston (Shawnee, Kan./Shawnee Mission Northwest) both threw at least six innings in their starts to get wins, while
Dan Borek (Greenville, Wis./Hortonville) was the winning pitcher in the final game of the weekend with a scoreless three-inning stint out of the bullpen.
Minnesota-Crookston finished 14-36 a year ago and was picked to finish 14
th in the 16-team Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. The Golden Eagles return their top three hitters from a year ago in first baseman Ryan Haggstrom, who batted .346 with 33 runs batted in a year ago; infielder Kenny Perez, who hit .341 and led UMC with four home runs and 37 runs driven in and infielder Ethan Mushitz, a .314 hitter last spring.
The Golden Eagles finished last season with a 7.47 team earned run average, but return their top hurler in righthander Nolan Wahlberg, who posted a 6-4 record and a 4.52 earned run average in 77 2/3 innings of work in 2015.
