By: The Prairie Fire completed a four-game sweep of Illinois College on Sunday, winning 8-2 and 12-11.
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Box Score 2
GALESBURG, Ill. – The Illinois College baseball team ended its 2016 season on a down note, falling twice to Knox College on Sunday as the Prairie Fire swept the four-game set against the Blueboys. Knox won the opener, 8-2, and closed out the season with a 12-11 barnburner.
Illinois College closes out the year at 15-21 overall, with a 2-14 mark in the Midwest Conference's South Division.
Game One: Knox 8, Illinois College 2
Though the Blueboys took a brief lead in the third inning, Knox responded back with four runs in the bottom of the inning to take the lead and the Prairie Fire never looked back from there.
Tyler Kozaritz took the loss for IC, falling to 1-4 for the year after going 5.1 innings and striking out five.
Ethan Crain worked 2.2 innings of scoreless relief late in the game.
Illinois College plated the opening run in the top of the third as
Parker Murray singled, stole second and then scored on an error by Knox starting pitcher Logan Thake. The lead only last until the next half-inning as Kosuke Nishitani was hit by a pitch and Brandon Crose doubled to put two on for Dalton James to bring home on a RBI single. Drake Sykes later homered with two away to up the advantage to 4-1.
The Blueboys cut the lead down to two runs in the fifth when
Austin Dormire hit a two-out single and stole second.
Bryce Rooney then singled him in, making it 4-2.
Knox put the game away in the sixth with four more runs, collecting five hits and also receiving two errors from the Illinois College defense along the way. The Blueboys put runners aboard in both the seventh and eighth innings but couldn't push any runs across and the Prairie Fire sat IC down in order in the ninth to close it out.
Dormire led IC in the game with two of the team's five hits.
Game Two: Knox 12, Illinois College 11
Illinois College burst out to a 4-0 lead early on in the final game of the season, but Knox responded with nine unanswered to take a 9-4 lead into the sixth inning. The Blueboys battled back, tying the game at 9-9 and again at 11-11, but the Prairie Fire had the final turn at the plate and the winning run came across with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
Following a scoreless first inning from both teams, Illinois College jumped ahead with three runs in the top of the second.
Seth Ferguson and
Seth Woollen each singled to lead off the frame and
Dawson Loschen brought the first run in on a RBI single. With the bases loaded and one out,
Cain Brady was hit by a pitch for the first of his six RBIs in the game, making it 2-0.
Austin Peck later singled home another run before Knox could escape the inning.
In the third inning, Woollen scored his second run of the game on a RBI single from Murray to up the lead to 4-0, but Knox answered back with a run of its own in the bottom half to make it 4-1 heading into the fourth.
In the bottom half of the fourth, Knox loaded the bases with no outs and Ryan Weitendorf and Kam Wells each collected RBIs as the Prairie Fire knotted the score up at 4-4. In the fifth, IC starting pitcher
Dylan Jones ran into further trouble and exited the game with a 7-4 deficit after Knox started the inning with a single, double and home run. It took Crain and
Dentler Loschen to bring the inning to a close and the Prairie Fire extended their lead to 9-4 by then.
The Blueboys began to close in on Knox in the sixth. Murray and Dormire were both aboard for Brady and he launched a three-run blast against relief pitcher Stryker Davies to make it 9-7.
After the younger of the two Loschen brothers pitched a scoreless sixth, the Blueboys leveled the game at 9-9 on another home run from Brady, this one scoring Dormire.
The Prairie Fire regrouped and scored runs in the bottom of the seventh and eighth to take an 11-9 lead to the ninth. There, singles from Brady and Peck were followed by a walk from
Anthony Lucchesi to load the bags with no outs. Though Rooney would bounce into a double play, a run would score to make it 11-10 and when Alex Bell unleashed a wild pitch, Peck raced in to tie the game at 11-11.
Connor Melton retired the first two hitters of the ninth, but the Prairie Fire got singles from Tristyn Ruiz and James to put runners on the corners. After an intentional walk of Sykes, the bases were loaded and Matt Mueller singled home the winning run.
Brady and Peck each had three hits in the contest for IC. Brady scored three runs on top of his six RBIs. Peck drove in one and scored one. Dormire and Woollen each collected a pair of hits in the game as well.
