SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- The Missouri State baseball team scored four runs in the third inning and held off a late Evansville charge Friday to open the Missouri Valley Conference season with a 7-4 victory over the Purple Aces at Hammons Field.
An evenly-contested game early saw the Bears (8-13, 1-0) take the lead in the bottom of the third.
Travis McComack drew a leadoff walk and stole second with two out to set up
Luke Voit’s RBI single to left. UE’s Keegan Dennis (1-2) issued another walk to
Trevor Rogers and
Christian Overstreet sent an 0-2 pitch into the left field bullpen for his third home run of the season and a 4-0 MSU lead.
A leadoff walked turned into a run for Evansville (10-13, 0-1) in the fourth when Chris Pearson drove in Nate Smith with a sacrifice fly for a 4-1 score.
Aaron Conway lined his third homer of year into the bullpen to open the fifth for Missouri State and Voit’s one-out single ended Dennis’ day after 4.1 innings. Rogers and Overstreet greeted reliever Matt Netherton with back-to-back singles to load the bases, but the Bears were unable to capitalize and ended the fifth with a 5-1 lead.
The Purple Aces answered in the sixth with a leadoff walk and a Nate Smith triple, making the score 5-2 with no out. Pearson’s one-out single brought Smith home and
Aaron Meade (1-3) struck out the next two hitters to keep MSU ahead 5-3.
UE took advantage of an error to score a two-out run in the seventh when Tom Heithoff bounced a single to left to pull the visitors within a run. That hit brought
Grant Gordon in to relieve Meade after the southpaw threw 6.2 innings, struck out six and allowed three earned runs in his first win of the year. Gordon walked Nate Smith and struck out Ryan Oesterle to preserve the 5-4 lead.
Kevin Medrano and Voit began the bottom of the seventh with back-to-back doubles in response to Evansville’s run. Voit moved to third on a Rogers ground out and Overstreet walked to set up another MSU run. With Beau Stoker at bat and a 2-2 count, Overstreet stole second and Voit scored when Pearson’s throw got past both middle infielders covering the bag to give the Bears a 7-4 lead.
Gordon retired the Aces in order in the eighth and was helped by a double play to pitch around two singles in the ninth for his third save of the year.
Game two of the series is set for Saturday at 12 p.m., an earlier time than originally scheduled due to the forecast for rain later in the day.
