Whitewater, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse baseball team fell 12-2 in eight innings at UW-Whitewater Friday night in Game 4 of the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) Championship (presented by Culver's) at Prucha Field at James B. Miller Stadium. The Eagles drop to 26-16 while the Warhawks, the top-seeded team in the tournament and ranked third on the D3baseball.com Top-25 poll, improve to 34-6.
UWL, the tournament's second-seed, will face third-seeded UW-Stevens Point in an elimination game Saturday, May 13 at noon. The Eagles defeated the Pointers, 3-0, in the opening game of the tournament Friday. UW-Whitewater advances to the WIAC Championship Game, scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday and will face the winner of UWL and UW-Stevens Point. The winner of the UWL/UW-Stevens Point contest will need to defeat UW-Whitewater twice to claim the league's tournament title. UW-Oshkosh was eliminated Friday after a 8-4 loss to UW-Whitewater and 7-4 to UW-Stevens Point.
The winner of the championship receives the WIAC's automatic bid to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Championship.
UWL started the scoring Friday night in the top of the first.
Joel Zyhowski led off the game with a single. He later scored from second base on a throwing error by UW-Whitewater pitcher Austin Jones after a sacrifice bunt from
Carter Hoffman. The Eagles added another unearned run in the third inning to make it 2-0 after a pair of Warhawks' throwing errors. The first error allowed Zyhowski to reach base to lead-off the frame, and later in the inning with two outs, the second error allowed him to score from third.
UW-Whitewater tied the game in the bottom of the fourth on Cal Aldridge's two-run single. The Warhawks broke the game open in the bottom of the fifth, scoring four runs on four hits to take a 6-2 lead. UWL retired the first two batters of the inning, but the next seven reached base for UW-Whitewater. The Eagles walked three batters and allowed a run to score on a wild pitch in the inning.
The Warhawks added four runs on three hits in the bottom of the sixth to extend the lead to 10-2. Two UWL errors and two walks contributed to the inning. A single from Jordan Kuczynski in the bottom of the eight plated two runs to give UW-Whitewater the 12-2 victory.
Jameson Lavery (5-3) took the loss for UWL, giving up six runs on eight hits in 4.2 innings of work. He struck out four and walked two. The Eagles were held to three hits.
Jones (8-2) picked up the win for UW-Whitewater, pitching 8.0 innings. He allowed two unearned runs on three hits, and struck out eight UWL batters. Brett Krause went 4-for-5 with two runs scored while Kevin White was 3-for-5 with two RBI and three runs scored for the Warhawks. Six different players had at least two hits for UW-Whitewater.
