Drury Baseball Suffers First Loss 10-5 Against Missouri Western
from a Drury Athletics press release:
Missouri Western built an early cushion, withstood a Drury rally, then pulled away again for a 10-5 victory over the Panthers in a non-conference baseball matchup Monday evening at Meador Park.
The Griffons, picked No. 2 in the MIAA preseason poll, improved to 5-3 while Drury fell to 5-1 on the season.
Western used a three-run homer from Grant Fink in the second to jump out to a 3-0 lead, then pushed it to 5-0 on a two-run shot by Kyle Simpson in the third for a 5-0 advantage against DU starter Kevin Sweeney (0-1), who was taking the mound against an opponent for the first time since 2011 after missing all of last season following Tommy John surgery.
Drury got one back in the bottom of the third when Colton Jones reached on an error and then later came home after another Griffons miscue to cut it to 5-1.
And after Western added another run in the top of the fourth, the Panthers countered with four in the bottom of the frame to make it a 6-5 deficit, sparked by a Dallas Williams three-run homer.
But the Griffons put it away with four runs on five singles in the fifth to build the lead back to five (10-5) and shut down the Panthers from there for the victory.
Banks Born (1-0) was deemed the winner with 2.2 innings of scoreless relief for a Western team that supported the pitching staff with 16 hits, including three by Shawn Egge, who drove in a pair. Spencer Shockley also had three hits for MWSU.
Nick Thimesch had two of DU's eight hits, and Matt Borgschulte drove in the Panthers' other run with an RBI single in the fifth.
Drury is back in action in Evansville, Ind., this weekend, participating in the USI Invitational. The Panthers will play Southern Indiana on Friday (5 p.m.), Southern Indiana (noon) and Indianapolis (3:30) on Saturday and Indianapolis (10 a.m.) again on Sunday in matchups with the teams picked 1-2 in the GLVC East preseason poll.
Box Score
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