OZARK, Mo. – Missouri S&T's 2019 season – one that included winning a share of the Great Lakes Valley Conference regular season championship --- came to a likely end Friday morning as Maryville handed the Miners a 9-4 defeat in the GLVC Tournament.
S&T dropped to 30-17 on the season as Maryville got an early jump on the Miners in Friday's contest.
The Saints (28-21) put four runs on the scoreboard in the opening inning – three of them unearned – off S&T starter
Luke Marcheschi (Bloomington, IL/Central Catholic) after the first three batters reached to load the bases. An error on Cody Klotz's ground ball allowed the first two runs to score, then Maryville doubled its early lead on a two-run single by Dominic Connelly.
S&T began to chip away at the margin in the second, when
Kaleb Reid (Smithville, MO/Smithville) tripled with one out and came home to score on
Zach Bracken's (Berthoud, CO/Berthoud) sacrifice fly. An inning later, back-to-back walks to
Will Hayes (Terre Haute, IN/South Vigo) and
Jason Volkmann (Liberty, MO/Liberty) led to the second run, as
Tim Lira's (Granger, IN/Penn) bloop single scored Hayes to cut the lead to 4-2.
Marcheschi settled in after the opening inning, retiring 11 of 12 hitters in one stretch and getting a double play ball to eliminate the one runner that did reach in that span. However, the Saints added to their lead in the seventh when Camdon Mercier led off with a triple and scored on a hit by Connelly that snuck through a drawn-in infield.
The Miners got a leadoff hit in the fourth, but didn't get another baserunner until the seventh when Saint starter Cody Siebenberger walked two hitters in the seventh, but Louis Niemerg got the final out to keep S&T off the scoreboard. S&T got another runner on in the eighth, but a lineout double play ended that threat, then Maryville proceeded to tack on four more runs in the ninth, the first two on a triple by Drake Lubin.
Bracken closed out the scoring by hitting a two-run homer off Niemerg in the bottom of the ninth.
Maryville outhit S&T 12-7 in Friday's contest; Reid had two of the Miners' seven hits. Missouri S&T was ranked eighth in last week's NCAA Division II regional rankings.