ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Despite losing 18-8 to Maryville in its final Great Lakes Valley Conference game of the season, the campaign will continue for Missouri S&T's baseball team as it qualified for a spot in next week's GLVC Tournament.
With Indianapolis' win over Lewis Sunday and a loss by Missouri-St. Louis in the first game of its doubleheader Sunday to Illinois Springfield, the Miners clinched the final playoff spot for the tournament that will get underway Thursday in Marion, Ill.
After the S&T contest had concluded at Maryville, the Miners held a one-half game lead over UMSL – but even if the Tritons won the second game of their doubleheader to bring about a tie in the standings, S&T holds the tiebreaker based on sweeping a four-game series over UMSL last weekend.
Missouri S&T (24-22, 15-17 GLVC) will go into the tournament as the eighth seed and will face regular season champion Quincy in the opening round on Thursday.
The Miners had a lot of offense early in Sunday's game, opening with a four-run inning that started with back-to-back hits, a single to left from
Chase Burgess (Overland Park, KS/Blue Valley West) and a double down the left field line by
Dakota Sill (Lansing, KS/Lansing) as Burgess advanced to third.
S&T scored its first run of the inning on
Doug Wood (Liberty, MO/Liberty North) groundout to third, then after
Cole Hampton (Edwardsville, IL/Edwardsville) was hit by a pitch,
Sam Monroe (Moline, Ill./Moline) followed with a three-run home run to right that increased the lead to 4-0.
Maryville (32-16, 21-11 GLVC) responded with a three-run inning in the bottom half of the frame, but the Miners put two more runs on the board in the second following a leadoff single by
Michael Hughes (St. Clair, MO/St. Clair) and a one-out hit by Burgess. Sill brought home the first run with a sacrifice fly, then Wood followed with a double to right center that scored Burgess.
S&T added onto its lead in the third on a Garrett Wiener solo homer to left center, but the Saints used the long ball in their half of the third to score seven times to take the lead.
The scoring began with a one-out single by Michael Gould that was followed by deep blast to left from Elias Stevens that made the score 7-5. Matt Schuler put the Saints on top with a three-run homer a short time later, then after a walk, Camden Rudy belted the Saints' third home run of the inning, a two-run blast to right center to complete the scoring in the inning.
Hampton led off the fifth with a home run to trim the deficit to 10-8, but but the Saints got that run back in their half of the fifth on an RBI single by Jack Zebig. After Zebig's hit, Gould increased the lead to 14-8 on a three-run blast to left center.
The Saints finished off the scoring with a run in the sixth, two in the seventh and one more in the eighth in a game where they outhit S&T 17-11. Burgess had three hits for the Miners and Hughes added two, while Monroe had three runs batted in on his homer in the first. S&T used nine pitchers in the contest with the second of the group,
Matt Ellingson (Lenexa, KS/Olathe Northwest), being tagged with the loss.
