Recaps: CMU's MAC Tournament
The road to the Mid-American Conference was a bumpy one for No. 2 seed Central Michigan as it made its way to an unsuccessful day 3 game against Miami.
After beating in-state rival Eastern Michigan for the MAC West title, it fell in the first round against No. 7 seed Western Michigan 9-7 in a game that had CMU scoring four in the first, but only three the rest of the way.
It also couldn’t overcome four errors throughout the course of the game.
Arguably, the lone highlight performance for the Chippewas was the play of junior Nate Theunissen. He was perfect at the plate, batting 3-for-3 with two home runs and four RBI’s.
The loss put CMU in a win-or-go-home scenario.
And it responded well, but not without some late-game heroics.
The Chippewas rallied from a three-run deficit in the ninth inning to keep its season alive with a 9-8 win.
Junior Tyler Hall was by far the best player on the field in the come-from-behind win. The infielder hit for the cycle, hitting a perfect 4-for-4 from behind the plate, with five RBIs.
The win earned CMU an opportunity to knock out the Broncos in an elimination game for both teams.
Runs came early and often, but the Chippewas had something WMU didn’t — an eight-run inning.
“I told them before to keep hitting the ball over the fence and score runs," said head coach Steve Jaksa. "I should have told them that every inning."
Despite the big second inning by CMU, the Broncos did not quit, rallying and eventually taking the lead 12-11 entering the final inning of play.
Once again the Chippewas prevailed with late-game heroics, scoring two runs to prevail 13-12.
Next up for CMU was the No. 3 Miami, with opportunities to move onto the MAC Tournament finals.
The Chippewas' second game of the evening didn’t go as well as their first.
CMU exhausted all its runs in the previous game, continually playing catch-up and only scoring two in a 5-2 loss to end its season.
“We had a lot of things that were probably not easy for us, in regard to playing two-thirds of our league games on the road just because of weather-related issues,” Jaksa said. “ (It was a) tough situation where I thought we had an umpire make a poor judgment on a situation that wasn’t necessary ... I can’t do anything about that, but it’s just extremely disappointing.”
Senior Brendan Emmett had his career come to a close. Despite not making it to the finals, he had no regrets.
“Miami deserved to win, but it wasn’t like we deserved to lose it," he said. “We played hard the whole way through.”
