PORTSMOUTH, Ohio – With a split at Shawnee State on Sunday, the University of Pikeville baseball team won its first Mid-South Conference series of the season after also winning 5-2 in the opener on Saturday. The Bears shut down SSU 6-1 in game one before falling 10-4 in the finale.
UPIKE moves to 19-16 overall and 3-9 in the MSC, while Shawnee State is 9-28 overall and 4-8 in league play.
The series win keeps Pikeville right in the middle of a tight standings race in the MSC with two league series left to play. Up next is a meeting with Cumberland (Tenn.) at 3 p.m. ET on Friday.
UPIKE 6, Shawnee State 1
Jay Vincent tied the score at 1-1 with a run-scoring single in the top of the sixth, followed by UPIKE tallying four runs on four hits in a busy seventh inning that helped it to the win as starter Dalton Dahley put together a big performance.
Dahley went seven innings, allowing just the one run on six hits with 12 strikeouts. Bruce Bell completed the win with two shutdown innings of relief as he struck out two batters without allowing a hit.
Josh Bailey paced UPIKE, going 3 for 4 with a double, while Travis Haen and Vincent drove in two runs each.
Shawnee took a 1-0 lead in the third inning and never scored again. Still, it looked like the run could be enough until Vincent followed up a walk by Haen with a single to right center that scored Jorge Perez from second.
UPIKE tallied its go-ahead run during a seventh inning that saw it send eight batters to the plate. Bailey led off with a double, moved to third on a passed ball and ultimately scored on an error. Three more run came home in the inning and an insurance run was added by the Bears in the ninth to put the game away.
Kyle Warner was stuck with the loss after allowing five runs on eight hits in just over six innings.
Shawnee State 10, UPIKE 4
Shawnee outhit UPIKE 13-7 in the nightcap and utilized a pair of errors in the field to finally get a win in the series.
The runs came early and often as Bailey scored in the first inning on a fielder's choice hit, but the lead was short lived as SSU struck for three runs in the bottom of the inning.
Brandon Sewell led off the third inning with a home run to cut the deficit to one at 3-2, but Shawnee State was going to find a way to stay in front the rest of the way.
That was evident by the two runs in the bottom of the third to take a 5-2 lead, and when Pikeville scored two more runs in the fourth to get within one again, SSU shot right back with a four-run fifth.
That fifth-inning scoring spree seemed to take the wins out of UPIKE as it failed to score again.
Haen was the only Bear to register multiple hits, going 2 for 4, and Bailey drove in the most runs with two. Matt Peterson tallied a double on his only hit.
Bryce Carden took the loss on the mount after lasting just two innings after giving up five runs on five hits with a strikeout. Tyler Straley won in a complete seven innings for Shawnee State as he scattered seven hits for four runs with three strikeouts against two walks.
-UPIKE-
