Wildcats split doubleheader

Saturday, March 13

Durant, OK

1:00 pm

Abilene Christian

Southeastern Oklahoma

3/13/2010 10:02:30 PM | Baseball

DURANT, Okla. -- Through the first month of the season, ACU's pitching staff had been the biggest reason for the team's 17-2 record.

But the pitching staff failed the Wildcats for the second time in the series against Southestern Oklahoma State on Saturday, and the seventh-ranked Wildcats left Oklahoma with their first series loss of the season.

After bouncing back from Friday's doubleheader sweep by Southeastern Oklahoma with an 8-2 win in Saturday's opener, the Wildcats saw their bullpen give up single runs in each of the last three innings of a 10-9, 10-inning loss in the series finale.

All three of ACU's losses to the Savage Storm were by one run, leaving the Wildcats at 18-5 overall and 11-5 in the league. Southeastern, meanwhile, improves to 17-8 and 13-7.

ACU will be back in action this week when it takes on old rival Delta State in a short two-game series at Ferriss Field in Cleveland, Miss. Tuesday's single game will get started at 6 p.m. with Wednesday's series finale set to start at 2 p.m. Both games can be heard locally on KSLI 1280 AM.

The series loss for the Wildcats is their first of the season, only the second in the last two years and only their fifth conference series loss since 2004.

ACU got off to a quick start in Saturday's first game with two runs in the first inning on RBI singles by Will Calhoun and Bret Bochsler and another run in the third on a Calhoun RBI double.

After the Savage Storm cut the lead to 3-2, ACU countered with two runs in the fifth and three more in the sixth to put the game out of reach. Calhoun went five innings on the mound, giving up four hits and two runs en route to picking up the win to improve to 2-1 on the season.

In the second game, ACU starter Aaron Lambrix was touched for 10 hits and seven runs (all earned) in five innings.

But after falling behind 3-1, the Wildcats rallied to tie the game at 3-3 and then score three more times in the fourth to take a 6-3 lead. Two of those runs came in on a two-run home run by Calhoun, who blistered Savage Storm pitching, going 7 for 15 with six RBI in the series.

ACU then pushed the lead to 8-3 with two more runs in the fifth on an RBI sacrifice fly by Ian Tomkins and an RBI single by Chris Hall.

But Southeastern got back in the game with four runs in the fifth to cut the lead to 8-7. The big blow was a two-out, three-run home run by Mike McCollum.

ACU got another run in the sixth on an RBI single by Cameron Bankston, and with a 9-7 lead, the Wildcats turned the game over to normally reliable closer Brad Rutherford.

Rutherford set the Savage Storm down in the sixth and seventhbefore giving up an unearned run on a balk in the eighth. Then in the ninth, Rutherford gave up a one-out solo home run to Casey Gibson to tie the game at 9-9.

Southeastern then got the win when it scored a run on a two-out wild pitch by Ryan McCabe, allowing K.C. Pfister to score the game-winner.