Baseball team's comeback ends on a groundout, lose 14-13
Scoring wasn’t a problem Sunday afternoon in Cookeville, Tenn.
The Central Michigan baseball team scored at will, but when it needed it most, the team couldn’t come through against Tennessee Tech, losing 14-13.
Junior Jordan Dean represented the tying run at second base in the ninth inning, but senior Nate Theunissen grounded out to the first baseman to end the game.
“We knew it could be a high scoring game just because of the type of park it is and the type of situation it was,” head coach Steve Jaksa said. “After we got down by the runs that we got down by and battled back to take the lead, I’m very pleased with how our guys fought back.”
CMU responded with a six-run sixth inning and a two-run seventh after TTU posted a seven-run fourth, but the Chippewas threw away the lead in the bottom of the seventh when the Golden Eagles rallied with four runs of their own. TTU’s Tevis Sherfield knocked in the winning run with a single to the shortstop.
CMU’s sixth inning – which included two errors and 12 batters – almost cost the Golden Eagles. Tyler Huntey, Jordan Adams and Nick Regnier each batted twice in the inning. And in it, CMU took advantage of those two errors and used a surplus of singles and doubles to chip away at the 10-5 deficit.
The Chippewas slowly gained momentum as the TTU lead diminished, but after giving the lead back to the Golden Eagles in the seventh, CMU couldn’t find a way to tie or take the lead in the final two innings.
“We kept battling,” Dean said. “It was a long game and we had a lot of long innings. I think we showed what we are kind of made of a little bit regardless of the loss. We had a big deficit in the middle innings and put up a big inning ourselves. We kind of showed everybody on the team what we can do and that we’re not out of any game.”
The Chippewas have a four-game homestand that begins Tuesday against Northwood and concludes with a three-game weekend series as they begin Mid-American Conference play against Buffalo.
