Baseball Drops Doubleheader Against USF
The Pilots baseball team suffered back-to-back losses on Tuesday at the hands of the Cougars of Saint Francis. The pair of contests move BC’s record to 15-13 overall, and the Pilots now sit at 5-11 in Crossroads League action.
In game one, Bethel and Saint Francis traded runs in the first frame. Even though both squads opened the game with early scoring, they both also combined to leave a handful of base runners stranded in the first frame alone, leaving potential runs unrecorded.
The Cougars broke the tie in the third inning and added three more insurance runs to build a 5-1 edge by the top of the sixth. In the bottom of the sixth, with two at-bats remaining, the Pilots sliced their deficit in half thanks to a two-run home run off the bat of Heath Brooksher. In the seventh, still needing a pair of scores to extend the game, the Pilots picked up a timely single from Brandon Diss, but back-to-back outs closed the ballgame with Bethel on the wrong side of a 5-3 tally.
Bethel looked to be taking control early in game two when four hits plated three runs in the bottom of the second, and the Pilots took their first lead of the day 3-1. However, after taking one run back in the fourth, USF rifled off four hits that turned into four runs in the fifth to reclaim the lead, one they never surrendered. Two additional runs in the ninth opened up the visitors’ advantage to 8-3, and a scoreless bottom of the ninth sealed the win for Saint Francis.
Austin Branock finished the day with five hits in eight at-bats while Brooksher recorded four total hits over the 16 innings of play.
Bethel will hit the road this weekend for three games at Spring Arbor starting with a single nine-inning battle on Friday scheduled to begin at 3:00 p.m.