Complete Lineup Leads @NCBearsBaseball over UCCS

Tuesday, April 18

Greeley, Colo.

3:00 pm

University of Northern Colorado

15-19

UCCS

21-19

UCCS

Northern Colorado

4/18/2017 7:31:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

Northern Colorado's bats recorded 16 hits as UNC defeated UCCS 10-6

By: Ryan Pfeifer, UNCBears.com

GREELEY – Northern Colorado baseball came back and scored 10 straight runs against Colorado-Colorado Springs Tuesday afternoon for a 10-6 win. The Bears bats came alive beginning in the third to total 16 hits on the day.

How It Happened
After a quiet first inning, UCCS took a 1-0 lead by putting together a two-out rally, as Matthew McDermott singled home the first run of the game. It was another two-out rally in the third that made it a 4-0 game. Back-to-back two-out hits allowed two of the three runs to score in the inning, before UNC responded in a big way.

In the bottom of the third, Northern Colorado's offense was aided by a pair of solo home runs. Dean Lawson and Matt Burkart hit their second and first long balls of the season to make it a 4-2 ball game. The Bears offense kept the pressure on the Mountain Lions with an Evan Johnson double and Cole Maltese walk. Jack Pauley brought home the third run of the inning with a sacrifice fly scoring Johnson.

The UNC hitters continued to get to the UCCS pitching in the fourth as Nick Tanner led the inning off with a single. Alex Kiel then reached on a bunt single, before runners advanced to second and third with one out on a Lawson sacrifice bunt. Tyler Yamaguchi put the Bears ahead with a single to right, scoring the pair of Tanner and Kiel. UNC never looked back, building upon that lead the rest of the way, while the pitching staff took care of business on the mound.

Northern Colorado put the game out of reach with a four-run sixth. The team recorded five straight hits beginning with Lawson, to bring across those four insurance runs. Cole Maltese added one more for good measure with a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth, his ninth of the season.

The Mountain Lions tried to make a comeback in the ninth, but the deficit was too much as they scratched two across before Jacob Howard came in for the final two outs of the game.

Game Changer
The top of the order is usually the glamour spots of a batting line up, but don't tell that to Dean Lawson and Tyler Yamaguchi who teamed up to make a dynamic duo in the eight and nine-hole of the Bears line up. The pair went 4-for-6 at the plate with four RBIs and three runs scored. Three of those four RBIs belonged to Yamaguchi, while Lawson had a solo big fly.

Notable
- Northern Colorado tied its season-high in hits with 16 on the day. UNC recorded 16 hits two other times this season.
- Every starter in the Bears line up recored at least one hit in the game. Matt Burkart, Evan Johnson, Cole Maltes, Nick Tanner, Dean Lawson and Tyler Yamaguchi all had two each.
- After UCCS scored four runs in the first three innings, the Bears pitching staff shut down the Mountain Lions. Starting with Justin Mulvaney, and including Aaron Hamilton, Isaac Bracken, Cody Carroll, Myles Gouveia and Jacob Howard UNC allowed just two runs on five hits, while striking out five.

Quotable
Carl Iwasaki
Hitting adjustments
"Our guys are very mindful of their strike zone. The strikes we saw on Saturday are not always called strikes and we need to be able to make the adjustment when the strike zone expands like that. Other than that adjustment from last week, we didn't make any others than always wanting to make hard contact. I went and pulled the numbers on us, we are getting outscored by about 50 in the first three innings, even in the middle innings and as you know, outscoring everyone in the latter third of games. Getting into those deficits has hurt us, but today we were able to match their three in the third with our own and that was a key for us, then taking the lead in the fourth and building from there.

About bottom of the order
"Tyler Yamaguchi is who he is and can manufacture well for us, when you have a nine hole guy who can produce three runs for us, that kills teams. We put Nick Tanner in the six hole since he likes to swing at the first pitch of his at bats a lot and flipped him with Matt Burkart and it worked well for us. Burkart allowed us to see more pitches in that first at bat, while Nick was able to continue his approach and help our offense continuing to go."

Matt Burckart
About hitting adjustments after last Saturday
"We are going to have tough days at the park sometimes like we did Saturday. All it takes is realizing that with one swing like Dean Lawson's today we take off. It's contagious when things are going well, but it is just as contagious when they are not. Coming out here and smacking them in the mouth was something we needed to do to get our offense rolling again."

Tyler Yamaguchi
On what it will take to win the series this weekend
"We will just have to keep on our approach as we head into the weekend. We had our ups and down this past week, but we continue to improve and will this weekend."

What's Ahead?
It's back to WAC play this weekend when UNC heads to league leader New Mexico State. The three game series begins on Friday night at 6 pm between the Bears and Aggies.