Box Score La Crosse, Wis. - The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse baseball team dropped a non-conference game as they fell 8-4 to Gustavus Adolphus College (Minn.) Wednesday afternoon at Copeland Park. The loss drops the Eagles, who are ranked 25th on this weeks d3baseball.com top-25, to 18-6 overall while the Gusties improve to 18-9.
Gustavus scored first as they scored a run in the first inning on an RBI single by Drake Siens. Gustavus extended their lead to 2-0 in the third inning with an unearned run. Gavin Baker's single scored Bryce Novak to give the Gusties the 2-0 lead. UWL would threaten in the third inning as
Jack Moran and
Logan Pye both walked to start the inning. After back-to-back outs,
Mac Born would reach after being hit by a pitch to load the bases but Noah Meffert would get a fly ball out to end the inning and keep the score at 2-0.
With the score still 2-0 in the seventh, Gustavus loaded the bases with one out. Jack Hanson doubled while Baker singled and Siens walked. After a strikeout, Logan Bjorkman hit a grand slam home run to extend the Gusties lead to 6-0. Gustavus would add two more runs on one hit and a sacrifice fly to lead 8-0 in the eighth inning. Pye led off the Eagles half of the eighth inning by being hit by a pitch and would advance to second when
Anthony Vivian walked.Then with one out, Born loaded the bases by reaching on a fielders choice.
Ty Hamilton then drew a walk to score Pye and give the Eagles their first run of the game. However, Lane Glaser came on in relief for Gustavus and induced a double play to end the Eagles threat.
Tim Urlaub singled to lead off the ninth for the Eagles and advanced to second when
Eli Roberts walked. Both would score on Vivian's 11th homerun of the season to cut the Eagles deficit to 8-4. But that would be all the scoring for UWL as
Jack Olver flew out to left field to end the game.
As a team, UWL finished with four hits including one each from Moran, Vivian, Olver, and Urlaub.
Owen Anderson (2-3) suffered the loss for the Eagles as he allowed one run on one hit and one strike out in 1.0 innings of work. UWL used seven different pitchers in the non-conference game.
Gustavus finished the game with 11 hits including three from Hanson and two from Baker. Bjorkman finished with four RBI's while Sien had two. Meffert (1-0) earned the win for Gustavus as he recorded a strikeout and did not allow a hit in 1.0 innings.
UWL returns to action on Saturday as they travel to UW-Whitewater to play a four game series against the Warhawks.Game one of Saturday's doubleheader is scheduled for 12:00 p.m. while Sunday's doubleheader is also slated for a 12:00 p.m. start.
