Baseball
Rally Falls Short in Opening Round Game

PLAINVIEW, Texas – Rallying from a big deficit, the University of Science and Arts scored six runs in two innings to make No. 4 Oklahoma City sweat, but the rally ended with the Stars scoring seven runs in the ninth to win Tuesday’s opening-round game of the conference tournament 17-6 at Wayland Baptist University.

After a sluggish start, the Drover offense came alive with eight of their 10 hits coming in final three innings. Before that point, OCU pitcher Mike Lee retired 15-of-17 batters with nine strikeouts.

Down 4-0 in the third inning, USAO put Lee in a jam as Dalton House and Dale Bellamy posted back-to-back base hits. The Drovers failed to capitalize as Lee struck out the top three batters in the lineup to end the threat.

OCU built a 9-0 lead with two more runs in the sixth on two RBI-doubles. Cody Howard put USAO on the board in the bottom half with his first home run of the season. In the seventh inning, Scott Ylda, Brad Sylvester and Bellamy reached on base hits.

Although Ylda was thrown out at home on Bellamy’s base hit, Ryan Birney drove in Sylvester and pinch runner R.J. Nieto on the next at bat to pull USAO to within 9-3.

OCU added another run in the eighth on back-to-back doubles, but USAO would not go away. Brandt Lierle and Ylda started the bottom of the eighth drawing walks, and Sylvester followed with his third homer of the season to make the OCU lead only 10-6.

In the ninth, the Stars answered in a big way with three home runs and seven total runs to effectively end the game. OCU improved to 42-8 overall while USAO drops to 23-24. Redshirt freshman Caleb Martin, who beat OCU earlier in the season, threw 126 pitches through 8 1/3 innings. Martin fell to 6-4 this season.

USAO will play an elimination game at 1 p.m. Wednesday against the loser of the Southern Nazarene/Wayland Baptist game.

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