{"id":9777,"date":"2019-03-06T21:11:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T05:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=9777"},"modified":"2019-03-06T21:26:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T05:26:07","slug":"western-baseball-hits-a-walk-off-home-run-saves-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/western-baseball-hits-a-walk-off-home-run-saves-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Western baseball hits a walk-off home run, saves game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/files\/2019\/03\/Baseball-824x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"246\" height=\"306\" class=\" wp-image-9778 aligncenter\" \/><br \/>\nSarah Pitz<\/strong> | Freelancer<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A bright sunny Saturday afternoon proved a perfect day for baseball. Add to that an excited crowd of 150 spectators, and it was evident the Wolves were ready to bring home a win in their doubleheader against Montana State Billings Yellowjackets on March 2. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The first inning showed some solid hitting by both teams, but none that were able to bring in runs. Pitchers rallied in the second inning. Despite almost getting hit in the face by a pitch in his previous at bat, Western\u2019s Alex Roth delivered with two strikeouts in a row.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Montana State countered, also delivering a pair of strikeouts. With the game scoreless until the fourth inning, things began rolling for the Wolves when Collin Runge scored the game\u2019s first run on a wild pitch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">By the sixth inning, Montana State was scrambling to score. That finally occurred with a run by the Yellowjackets\u2019s Conner Linebarger due to a throwing error by the Wolves. That was rapidly followed by runs from Montana State\u2019s Jalen Garcia, Brandon Koszuth, Daniel Cipriano and Matt Dillion. By the end of the inning, Montana State University had collected five runs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While the Wolves turned around collecting three more runs of their own \u2014 Jared McDonald, Thomas Ahlstrom and Connor McCord all scored \u2014 Montana State dominated with an ending sixth inning score of 5-4. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the seventh inning, both teams were able to hold their own. But that changed in the eighth inning when Montana State\u2019s Andrew Schleusner picked up yet another run.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, it was the ninth inning that proved to be the game-changer as Montana remained scoreless and Western pushed ahead. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The break came for the Wolves when Patrick Chun sent a ground ball to second base allowing Derek Maiben to score. Later in the inning, it would be Jared McDonald who hit a home run ball to right center field, bringing home Griffey Halle and Collin Runge. The three run play brought the crowd to their feet and clinched the win for the Wolves.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The 8-6 victory marked Western\u2019s second continuous win and their first home win of the season. The Wolves would continue to end up on top in their four game series with the Yellowjackets with three wins and one loss.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Contact the author at <a href=\"mailto:spitz18@wou.edu\">spitz18@wou.edu<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo courtesy of Ashlynn Norton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sarah Pitz | Freelancer A bright sunny Saturday afternoon proved a perfect day for baseball. Add to that an excited crowd of 150 spectators, and it was evident the Wolves were ready to bring home a win in their doubleheader against Montana State Billings Yellowjackets on March 2. The first inning showed some solid hitting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":9778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"modified_by":"The Western Howl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}