ROLLA, Mo. - The Missouri S&T baseball team continued its quest to make the Great Lakes Valley Conference tournament with a doubleheader sweep Saturday afternoon over Missouri-St. Louis, as the Miners (22-19, 13-14 GLVC) took game one 11-8 and earned the series victory with a 7-4 win in the nightcap on Senior Day at the Ballpark at S&T.
Game 1: Miners 11, Tritons 8
After S&T starting pitcher
Ethan Morrow (Lenexa, KS/Shawnee Mission West) escaped an early jam when the Tritons loaded the bases but didn't score, the Miners took that momentum into the bottom half of the inning and put six runs on the scoreboard.
Chase Burgess (Overland Park, KS/Blue Valley West) opened up the Miners' half by hitting the second pitch well over the fence in left center to put S&T on top.
Dakota Sill (Lansing, KS/Lansing) and
Doug Wood (Liberty, MO/Liberty North) followed by reaching base on back-to-back hit-by-pitches, then
Cole Hampton (Edwardsville, IL/Edwardsville) ripped a single to left that scored Sill and Wood.
Later in the inning and with runners on the corners,
Sam Monroe (Moline, Ill./Moline) delivered a single to left that scored Hampton, which was followed by a
Michael Hughes (St. Clair, MO/St. Clair) RBI single to right that scored
Tommy Ruether (Washington, MO/Washington) to make it 5-0.
Aaron Berkhoff (Colorado Springs, CO/Cheyenne Mountain) hit a sacrifice fly to bring home the sixth run of the inning.
UMSL (21-24, 14-13 GLVC) drew closer with a run in the third and three in the fourth to get the margin back to 6-4, but the Miners responded with a three-run fourth of their own to break the game open. Berkhoff drew a lead off walk, then stole second and advanced to third on a fly out from Burgess. Sill immediately followed with an RBI single to right that scored Berkhoff, then two batters later, Hampton hit a two-run blast over the left center wall that gave S&T a 9-4 lead.
In the sixth, S&T added two insurance runs in the inning when Hampton launched his second two-run homer of the day, giving him six runs batted in. UMSL scored four times in the seventh before
Matt Ellingson (Lenexa, KS/Olathe Northwest) shut the door on the Tritons' late rally.
UMSL outhit S&T 13-11 in the first game, but Hampton and Hughes had three hits apiece for the Miners. Morrow pitched the first four innings and fanned four batters to earn his third victory of the season.
Game 2: Miners 7, Tritons 4
Game two started out as a pitcher's dual between S&T's
Matthew Kaiser (St. Louis, MO/Vianney) and UMSL's Nick Torres as each pitcher allowed just one hit in the first two innings. But in the third, S&T broke through against Torres, scoring twice in the inning on an RBI triple by Berkhoff that scored Hughes and a hit that followed by Burgess to bring in Berkhoff.
The Miners continued to tack on runs, scoring in the fourth after
Garrett Weiner (Alton, IL/Marquette) walked and Monroe and Hughes followed with back -to-back singles to score Weiner. Two more runs scored in the fifth, as Sill singled with one out and scored when
Doug Wood (Liberty, MO/Liberty North) followed with a liner to the right center field gap. Wood later scored on a balk by UMSL reliever Trent Anderson to give S&T a 5-0 advantage.
The Tritons got their first run in the sixth on a double by of the game on a double to right from Andrew Buescher that scored Jake Issacs, but S&T got that run back and another in the bottom half of the inning. Berkhoff drove in the first with his second triple of the game to bring home Hughes, then crossed the plate himself on a wild pitch from Anderson.
As was the case in the opener, the Tritons got closer in the seventh as they got a three-run homer from Brandon Olion, but Wood recorded the final out of the game on a diving stop up the middle to rob Buescher of a hit.
Hughes and Berkhoff had two hits each for the Miners as they outhit UMSL 9-7. Kaiser pitched the first 5.1 innings and struck out five, while
Nate Kemp (O'Fallon, MO/St. Dominic) pitched the final inning and a third.
The series will conclude with a single game Sunday at noon at the Ballpark at S&T.
