ROLLA, Mo. - The Missouri S&T baseball team earned a series win over Truman State Sunday as
Doug Wood (Liberty, MO/Liberty North) hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Miners a 10-9 win at the Ballpark at S&T.
Wood hit the second pitch of the ninth inning off Truman's Michael Daggett over the fence in left center, giving the Miners their third straight win in the series after the Bulldogs had taken the first game of the four-game set on Friday. The series win was the first for the Miners in Great Lakes Valley Conference play.
S&T (14-15, 5-11 GLVC) took the early lead in the bottom of the first on a two-out RBI single off the bat of
Tommy Ruether (Washington, MO/Washington) that scored
Chase Burgess (Overland Park, KS/Blue Valley West). However, the Bulldogs (12-17, 2-10 GLVC) scored six times in the third to take the lead, moving in front on Holden Missey's two-run single.
The Miners climbed back into the game in the fourth, erupting for a five-run inning that started when
Sam Monroe (Moline, Ill./Moline) was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to score Ruether.
Michael Hughes (St. Clair, MO/St. Clair) followed with a two-run double to left to score Wood and
Garrett Weiner (Alton, IL/Marquette) that made it 6-4 and promoted a Bulldog pitching change.
The first batter Jordan Marlott faced,
Aaron Berkhoff (Colorado Springs, CO/Cheyenne Mountain), tied the game at six with a two-run double to left that scored Hughes and Monroe.
S&T then took the lead in the fifth when Weiner hit a chopper to third and
Cole Hampton (Edwardsville, IL/Edwardsville) beat the throw at home. The Miners got another run in the fifth when Monroe followed shortly thereafter with an RBI single to score Weiner.
Truman cut the deficit to 8-7 on back-to-back hits by Tal Dean and Luke Turner, but S&T got that run back in the bottom of the frame on a Ruether had a hard hit ball to second that Grant Beck had trouble fielding; the ball went into shallow center that allowed
Dakota Sill (Lansing, KS/Lansing) to score on the play.
In the seventh and with two outs, Truman tied the game at nine on an RBI single by Beck and a bases-loaded walk to Dean, but
Nate Kemp (O'Fallon, MO/St. Dominic) got Turner on a ground ball to end the inning. Kemp also induced a double play ball in the eighth to wipe out a leadoff hit, then
Elijah Gross (Lee's Summit, MO/Lee's Summit West) pitched around a two-out single in the ninth to keep the game tied to set up Wood's heroics in the bottom of the frame.
The Miners were outhit 13-12 in the game, but Truman was hampered by four errors in the contest. Burgess, Ruether, Hughes and Berkhoff all had two hits for the Miners, while Gross, the fifth pitcher used by S&T in the contest, picked up his first win of the season.
Missouri S&T will continue GLVC play with a four-game series at Southwest Baptist that begins Thursday with a single game scheduled for 5 p.m. in Bolivar, Mo.
