PENSACOLA, Fla - After having Saturday's contest against Sewanee canceled in the third inning, Carroll Baseball closed their spring break campaign at the Studer's Blue Wahoo Challenge with a 14-12 victory over UW-Stout. Carroll outscored the Blue Devils 8-1 over the final three innings to secure a comeback victory.
Carroll (9-5) nearly matched the Blue Devils at the plate with 18 hits with four going for extra bags to Stout's 20 hits, five of which went for extra bases . UW-Stout (1-6) saw most of their production at the plate come from the 9-through-3 hitters, who combined for 13 hits and 7 of the 12 runs.
Three Pioneers, Jimmy Williams, Eddie Synek, and Thomas Ward all found a gap for three hits in the game, while Joey Appino, Ben Hurt Haller, and Anthony Tado chipped in two hits apiece. Three more Carroll hitters safely reached base with a base hit of their own.
Both teams had hot bats right of the gate, as they would cross the plate two times each in both of the first two innings, knotting the score at 4-4 to set the stage for the late-game offensive battle that was to come. Before that, stout went scoreless for three straight innings while Carroll scored two more in the third and went scoreless through the fourth and fifth as the Pios held a 6-4 lead after five complete innings.
The Blue Devils exploded for seven runs on six hits in the sixth inning, which was quickly matched by the Pios in the bottom half of the inning to the tune of five runs on six hits, finding the game once again tied 11-11 after the dust settled on the prolific inning.
After putting donuts on the scoreboard in the seventh inning, a single in the eighth gave UW-Stout a 12-11 lead, but Carroll's defense held to leave the bases loaded and escape the inning with minimal damage. In the bottom half, Hurt Haller singled up the middle to send in Synek and Lane Scott and was immediately rewarded with a score of his own off the bat of Ward, making the difference in the game as Connor Nolen and the Pio defense allowed just one base runner and escaped with the 14-12 victory.
Four Pioneer pitchers took the mound as Dylan Eckrote earned the start, pitching two innings allowing four earned runs on five hits with two strikeouts. Jack Piper and Isaac Verbruggen pitched in four relief innings, and Connor Nolen earned his third victory of the season, pitching three full innings and sitting five batters while allowing only one run on five hits.
Carroll will return to the Midwest as they host Wisconsin Lutheran College on Wednesday, March 19. First pitch from Frame Park will be at 3 p.m.
