BELOIT, Wis. – The Illinois College baseball team split two games with Beloit College on Saturday afternoon, winning the opener, 3-1, before falling by a score of 13-6 later in the day. Though IC and Beloit are both Midwest Conference schools, they play in different divisions for baseball so conference standings are not affected. The Blueboys end the day at 9-8 and the Buccaneers move to 8-7.
Non-conference play continues for Illinois College on April 3 with a trip to Charleston, Ill. to take on Division I opponent Eastern Illinois University at 3 p.m. MWC play starts at home on April 6 with a doubleheader against Monmouth College at 12 p.m.
Game One: Illinois College 3, Beloit 1
Pitching was front and center in the opener for the Blueboys.
Dentler Loschen (3-0) went 6.0 innings and gave up just six hits and one earned run.
Christian Stawar closed it out in the ninth for his second save of the year.
Illinois College took the lead for good in the top of the second inning.
Brendan Stanfield and
Cade Hennemann started the inning off with singles. A
Colin Dearing single drove in Stanfield from second base and
Tim Sommerfeld brought Hennemann in on a RBI groundout following a
Grant Argyilan single to load the bases.
Beloit cut the lead in half in the bottom of the fifth with three consecutive two-out singles to make it 2-1. Loschen escaped the jam, however, and then sat the Buccaneers down in order in the sixth.
In the seventh inning, Hennemann reached on an error and was moved to second on a sacrifice bunt from Dearing. Argyilan and Sommerfeld followed with singles to bring Hennemann home for an insurance run. Working the seventh inning, Stawar got the first two hitters to ground out to
Scott Kasting at shortstop. A pair of walks brought the winning run to the plate before he got the batter swinging to end the game.
Game Two: Beloit 13, Illinois College 6
A solid start to the second game fell apart in an ugly fifth inning in which Beloit put 10 runs on the board, erasing a 5-3 deficit. That would be all the offense the Buccaneers would need as a single run from IC in the seventh inning wasn't nearly enough to complete the comeback.
Things started off solidly enough for the Blueboys. Scoreless after two innings, Illinois College struck first in the top of the third when Kasting drove in two runs on a two-out single. Beloit answered back in the bottom of the inning, scoring three unearned runs against
Brian Kindt. That lead lasted only until the top of the fourth when Stanfield led off with a double and Dearing singled him home to knot the score at 3-3.
In the top of the fifth, Illinois College took a lead off of RBIs from Dearing and Hennemann to take a 5-3 lead. That's when things fell apart for the Blueboys. It took three relievers to get through the bottom of the fifth as the first 10 Beloit batters of the inning reached base in some capacity. It was 12-5 by the time IC recorded its first out of the frame and the Buccaneers tacked on another run after that to go up by eight.
In the top of the seventh, Stanfield reached base on an error and eventually came around to score on a
Colin Edwards RBI single to left. Illinois College would proceed to load the bases before the Buccaneers brought the game to a close.
Dearing, Argyilan and
Joe Paparelli all ended with two hits in the contest.
Jake Schippert fell to 1-2 on the year.
