Baseball | 5/17/2016 3:39:00 PM
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ABILENE - Abilene Christian baseball continues its season-ending road trip Tuesday night with a stop at Dallas Baptist's Horner Stadium for a 6:30 p.m. game against the 29th-ranked Patriots. The Wildcats defeated DBU 3-2 earlier this season at Crutcher Scott Field on a walk-off squeeze bunt from junior infielder
Aaron Draper in the bottom of the ninth.
Despite the loss, Dallas Baptist leads its all-time series with the Wildcats, 19-10-2.
ACU (16-31) enters tonight's contest on a two-game winning streak, having defeated Incarnate Word in back-to-back games Friday and Saturday by scores of 2-1 and 1-0. Sunday's game and a chance for the Wildcats to complete a three-game sweep of their rivals were washed out due to rain.
Friday night at Sullivan Field senior Garrett deMeyere scattered four hits and a walk over his 8.0 scoreless innings of work, and on Saturday senior
Aaron Mason came within two outs of tossing a complete-game shutout.
deMeyere exited his start after 96 pitches, turning the game over to
Drew Hanson who surrendered a solo home run to the first batter he faced. Hanson walked another batter and was replaced by senior
Nick Palacios, who earned his first of two saves last weekend by getting a strikeout and ground ball to finish the game.
Mason the following evening retired 13 consecutive UIW batters between the fourth and eighth innings but started the ninth with two singles wrapped around a sacrifice hit. Palacios then came on to save the game and secure the shutout victory by getting the Cardinals' cleanup batter to hit into a 4-3 double play.
Wildcat pitching combined for 10 Ks against UIW and limited their hitters to a .164 batting average.
ACU collected 13 base hits with nine of them coming off the bats of Draper (4-for-6),
Russell Crippen (3-for-9) and
Heath Beasley (2-for-8).
Draper reached base seven of eight times, including two walks, and drove in the first run Friday night.
Beasley twice drove home Crippen for the game-winning RBI. The Wildcats' designated hitter brought in Crippen on a sacrifice fly to center field in the eighth inning of Friday's game, and on a first-inning single Saturday. Both of Beasley's RBI oppotunities were set up by No. 2 hitter
Derek Scott, whose hits along the ground moved Crippen from second to third base.
Nate Cole starts for the Wildcats tonight, and in his previous appearance against the Patriots he struck out 10 batters through 7.0 innings with two walks, six hits and one unearned run allowed.
ACU took a 2-1 lead into the ninth but the Patriots got their first three batters aboard and tied the game on a bases-loaded hit by pitch. Reliever
Zach Kornely escaped the jam by getting the next batter to line into a double play and finished the inning with a strikeout of No. 3 hitter Darick Hall.
The Wildcats' small-ball tactics worked to perfection in their half of the ninth against reliever Gavin Fritz. Pinch hitter
Alex Check led off with a single up the middle and advanced to second base on a bunt by catcher
Alex Copeland.
Mark Pearson followed with an infield single and Draper then came through with the game-winning bunt single that was perfectly placed along the right-side of the infield grass.
Dallas Baptist is 19-7 since that defeat and enters the game with overall and conference records of 34-16 and 13-4, which is good for first-place in the Missouri Valley Conference.
