SHREVEPORT, La. — Southern Utah catcher Mike Martin drove in three runs, including a one-out, walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth, as the Thunderbirds survived a furious ninth-inning rally to advance to their fifth-straight Mid-Continent Conference baseball tournament title game by eliminating Western Illinois Friday night, 6-5. SUU improved to 19-29 on the year with the win, while the Leathernecks season ends at 29-36.
SUU jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first inning thanks to RBIs from Amos Burgess, Shelby Guest and Martin.
Freshman Ryan Zimmerman (W, 7-4) made the lead stand by tossing eight innings of five-hit baseball, surrendering only one run, which came in the third on a Blake Schultz run-scoring hit. Guest and Martin would come through again with consecutive RBI-singles in the seventh to extend the T-Bird lead to 5-1.
But Western Illinois battled back to even the score. Zimmerman, who retired 16 of the next 19 hitters he faced after allowing the third-inning run, ran into trouble in the ninth as the first two Leatherneck batters, Kyle Malan and Aaron Milliken, reached on a hit and a walk to open the frame. Zimmerman would strike out Matt Trowbridge with a pitch in the dirt, which got by Martin to move the baserunners into scoring position. Zimmerman then balked home Malan and Ryan Schmidgall, who came on to pitch in the seventh, singled home Milliken to cut the lead to 5-3.
Reserve catcher Jake Gloude then reached on a T-Bird infield error, which moved Schmidgall to third and he would later score on a Jim Sanew ground-out to shave the deficit to 5-4. Pinch-runner Brian Davy, who replaced Gloude at second base after the error, took third on the ground ball and scored on a Martin passed ball to pull Western even at 5-5. Lead-off hitter Dane Ainsworth followed with an infield single, but was erased on a Ryan Cougill fielders choice to end the inning.
In the SUU ninth, Burgess just missed his third home run of the tournament with a drive to straight-away center field, but Ainsworth tracked it down to record the first out. Martin then stepped up and did not miss, pulling the Schmidgall offering over the right-field wall to end the game.
SOUTHERN UTAH 7, CENTENARY 4: Amos Burgess and Shelby Guest had three hits each, while junior righthander Justin Abbott went the distance, as Southern Utah's baseball team stayed alive in the 2004 Mid-Continent Conference tournament Friday afternoon.