Bowling Green State University Athletics
Bowling Green State University
BALL STATE
Baseball Team Wins First Game Of Doubleheader With Ball State
April 11, 2009 | Baseball
April 11, 2009
BOWLING GREEN, OHIO - The Falcon baseball team rode the right arm of sophomore Brennan Smith to victory in the first game of a doubleheader Saturday afternoon at Steller Field against Ball State. The Falcons scored two runs in the seventh inning to break a 1-all tie and then Smith and senior reliever Dusty Hawk finished off the 3-2 victory.
Smith went eight innings throwing 115 pitches while allowing only four hits, two doubles, a home run and a single, while striking out nine and walking three. Smith earned his fifth win of the season while lowering his ERA to 2.59 and opposition batters are now hitting a paltry .188 against him for the season. Smith picked off BSU runners in the sixth and seventh innings and he retired teh Cardinals in order in three other innings.
Hawk came in to start the ninth inning and things got interesting before he earned his third save of the season. The first two batters he faced reached on singles. After a sacrifice moved each runner up one base, Ian Neilson hit a sacrifice fly to left field to drive in one run making the score 3-2. Hawk retired the final batter, shortstop T.J. Baumet on a lazy foul fly ball to right field.
Ball State took the early lead in the fourth inning, as BSU junior Brad Piatt was matching Smith pitch-for-pitch. The Cardinals got the early lead on a one-out home run to left field by catcher Zach Dygert, his fifth of the season, on a 2-0 pitch.
The Falcons evened the score in the fifth as juniors Mark Galvin and T.J. Blanton singled with one out. After senior Ryan Shay flew out, freshman Patrick Martin singled up the middle to score Galvin with the first BGSU run.
In the bottom of the seventh, Bowling Green hit for a pair of runs and again it was Galvin and Blanton causing the headaches for the Cardinals. Just like the fifth, the two BG players had consecutive singles, only Blanton's in this frame was a bunt single and the ball was thrown away at first allowing both to move up one base. After Shay reached on a swinging bunt to the left side of the infield that drove in Galvin, junior Tyler Elkins singled up the middle with two outs to plate Blanton with the third run.
Smith worked a 1-2-3 eighth setting things up for Hawk in the ninth.
Galvin and Blanton had two hits apiece for BG while Shay, Martin and Elkins collected the RBI. Lead off hitter Jeremy Hazelbaker and Dygert had two hits each for the Cardinals.
Bowling Green improved to 14-14, 5-4 in the Mid-American Conference with the win while Ball State fell to 15-13 overall and 5-3 in league play. Ball State came into the weekend as the West Division leader in the MAC while the Falcons were fourth in the East Division.
