NORMAL, Ill. – Logan Wiley started his day with a second-consecutive All-Missouri Valley Conference selection and punctuated it with 8.0 shutdown innings in the Bears' 7-1 victory over Valparaiso on the opening day of MVC Championship play at Duffy Bass Field.
Wiley (5-5) retired 16 straight Valparaiso hitters to begin his afternoon, holding the Crusaders hitless until the seventh inning and striking out eight batters overall in winning his fifth-straight decision. MSU's offense clicked as well, scoring a pair of second-inning runs to seize momentum, then methodically extending its margin with two-run rallies in the fifth and seventh frames to pull away for its fourth-consecutive win—all over Valpo.
Jack Duffy spearheaded the Bears' 10-hit attack with a pair of run-scoring doubles, while MVC Freshman of the Year
Dakota Kotowski added a 2-for-4 effort, as well a second-inning RBI groundout.
Brooks Zimmerman also doubled twice, driving in a run and scoring two more for the Bears.
The victory extended the Bears' (20-34) streak of recording at least one victory in MVC Championship play to 25 straight appearances dating back to the 1994 Valley Tournament. MSU advances to the double-elimination portion of the bracket with an 11 a.m. contest against top seed DBU Wednesday (May 22).
Wiley's masterful performance set the tone early, as the junior right-hander easily dispatched the first 16 hitters, using just 55 pitches to work through five perfect innings with only three balls leaving the MSU infield over that span. Weather conditions played an early role in the tournament opener as well, as winds gusting up to an estimated 30 miles per hour helped the Bears
Ben Whetstone record the first hit of the game on what appeared to be a routine pop-up into shallow left field. The junior first baseman reached safely when the winds pushed the ball nearly to the infield, falling in just beyond the reach of a hard-charging All-MVC defender Riley Dent.
Missouri State would cash in moments later, scoring a pair of runs on successive pitches from Jon Tieman. Zimmerman drove a run-scoring double to left to chase home Whetstone, before Kotowski's bouncer to short scored the MSU runner from third for a 2-0 MSU lead. With Wiley cruising through the middle innings, the Bears struck for two more tallies in the fifth on singles by Kotowski and Hull, a Crusader throwing error and the first of Duffy's two consecutive RBI doubles.
After walking Jeremy Drudge with one out in the sixth to allow the first Valpo baserunner of the game, Wiley permitted a base hit to Sam Shaikin to start the seventh for the first Crusader hit. Blake Billinger's drive to center narrowly eluded a diving Duffy to bring in the lone Valpo run of the contest.
MSU touched up Tieman (2-10) for three doubles as part of its two-run seventh, as
Logan Geha and
Joey Polak delivered extra-base hits to account for the first run, before Duffy scorched a double that sailed over the head of Jeremy Drudge in right to bring in the second for a 6-1 MSU lead.
After Wiley emphatically closed out his performance by working out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam in the top of the eighth, MSU rallied once again to stretch its lead in the home half. Zimmerman's second two-bagger—and a 2019 season-high sixth on the day for the Bears—sparked another MSU scoring threat, as a Valpo throwing error allowed MSU's seventh run to cross the plate.
Tieman suffered the setback for Valpo, which concluded its season with a 14-36 overall mark. The right-hander allowed six runs (five earned) on eight hits in 6.2 innings.
