EVANSVILLE, IND. – A day after recording 11 hits in its season-opening win, the University of Missouri-St. Louis baseball team recorded 15 on Sunday in an 11-8 win over Saint Joseph's to improve to 2-0.
Senior
Justin Busekrus and junior
Jake Beckwith had three hits each, while senior
JonMichael Weaver tallied two hits and added two RBIs. Freshman
Tom DeCero also recorded a pair of RBIs, reaching base four times on a hit and three walks.
Junior
Zach Lindsay picked up the win in five scoreless innings of relief work. He allowed three hits, while striking out five. Senior
Austin Simokaitis recorded his first save of the year and the 12
th of his career, moving into a tie for fifth place in that category on the program's career charts.
In a back-and-forth contest, the Tritons scored the final five runs of the game to garner the victory. Three of those runs came in the sixth inning with two outs after UMSL had loaded the bases. With redshirt freshman
Jose Ortiz at bat, the Pumas centerfielder was charged with an error, allowing the bases to clear for a 9-8 Tritons lead. Weaver made it 10-8 in the seventh with an RBI single, while in the ninth inning, senior
Dominic Orlando drove in Busekrus with a double.
Saint Joseph's (2-4) finished with 12 hits and scored three unearned runs on four UMSL errors.
The Tritons scored twice in the first inning, but that was countered by three Pumas runs in the bottom of the frame. Buskerus' RBI double in the second knotted the score at 3-3 before Saint Joseph's took a 5-3 lead, scoring two unearned runs.
UMSL again tied it up in the third on freshman
Matt Foster's sac fly and Ortiz's RBI single to shortstop. A two-out single in the bottom of the third made it 6-5 Pumas.
DeCero's RBI walk tied it at 6-6 in the fourth, while in the bottom half, Saint Joseph's used three hits and one Tritons error to take an 8-6 lead.
UMSL returns to the field next Saturday and Sunday, traveling to Cartersville, Ga., for four games against Illinois Springfield before continuing south to Florida, where the Tritons will play five games between March 8-12.
