Strong UND Pitching Pushes Past @NCBearsBaseball

Wednesday, May 20

Mesa, Ariz.

8:00 pm

University of Northern Colorado

16-31

North Dakota

24-25

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	Runs R	Hits H	Errors E
Northern Colorado	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	2	10	1
North Dakota	0	0	0	2	4	0	0	1	X	7	10	0

Photo by: Dean Popejoy

5/20/2015 11:25:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

Northern Colorado baseball dropped its first game of the WAC Tournament Wednesday night 7-2

By: Ryan Pfeifer, UNCBears.com

MESA, Ariz.— Northern Colorado baseball dropped its first game of the WAC Tournament Wednesday night 7-2 to North Dakota. Solid pitching from North Dakota starter Andrew Thome led the way for UND over UNC.

The first 16 batters of the game went down in order before UND strung together back-to-back hits in the third, but left them both on base.

UNC got its first hit of the game from Nick Tanner (Foothill Ranch, Calif.) in the fourth inning, but that would do it for the Bears in the inning.

North Dakota was first on the board with three straight, two-out hits in the form of a double, triple and single to make it a 2-0 game.

Starter Matt Loutzenhiser (Parker, Colo.) pitched four solid innings to begin the game. His final line was four innings allowing two runs, both earned on five hits while striking out two and walking one.

The first three batters of the fifth inning for North Dakota reached via an error, a triple and then a home run to extend UND's lead to 5-0. North Dakota later added on another run in the inning to make it 6-0 through five.

Neither team scored again until the eighth when UND added on its final run with a sacrifice fly to center field making it a 7-0 game.

Northern Colorado broke the shutout in the ninth inning. Jensen Park (Kaneohe, Hawaii) earned his lone hit of the night with a single to center field and was driven home by a Cole Maltese (Superior, Colo.) double down the left field line. Maltese later came home on a Marco Castilla (Littleton, Colo.) single through the right side. The Bears left two on to end the game.

"It was good to see us keep fighting until the very end of the game," head coach Carl Iwasaki said. "Tomorrow is win or go home for us, and showing the fight we did tonight will help going into tomorrow. Sacramento State is a very good team and will be tough competition for us coming off tonight's game."

UNC now has a quick turnaround playing against Sacramento State tomorrow morning with first pitch scheduled for 11:00 a.m. pacific time in an elimination game.