Pittsburg, Kan. - The Missouri Southern baseball program picked up a resilient 20-16 victory over rival Pittsburg State in game two of the MIAA weekend series on Saturday from Al Ortolani Filed as
Matt Miller broke the career home run record and the team blasted eight in general to tie a program record.
The Lions (10-5, 1-1 MIAA) had eight home runs as
Garrett Rice and
Treghan Parker finished with two each as Miller,
Nate Mieszkowski,
Henry Kusiak and
Ethan Clark had homers as well. Mieszkowski led the team with five RBIs, Rice and Parker finished with four RBIs each and Miller went 4-for-4 with four runs scored.
Cale McCallister picked up his third win of the season with 2.1 innings or relief work.
Kyle Kaempf,
Jacob Davis and
Kyle Moore each collected two strikeouts from the pen.
Pittsburg State (9-5, 1-1 MIAA) was led by Brett Daley with eight RBIs after going 2-for-3 with a home run and double.
Starting in the first inning Rice would homer down the left field line and Clark went deep to left center for his first career homer to open up a 4-0 lead. The Gorillas came up with five runs in teh first and two more in the second for an early 7-4 lead. Miller began the scoring in the third inning with his 42nd career home run to pass Jim Baranoski 1986-89 for the program record and a Parker tape measure shot to right field evened it up 7-7.
In the fourth inning Southern would score off a throwing error that allowed Mieszkowski to cross home plate but a five run inning by the hosts capped off by a grand slam swung the game 12-8 in favor of PSU. The fifth inning would see the momentum shift once again as a Parker walk with the bases loaded scored Miller and Mieszkowski hit a grans slam to make it a 13-12 Lions lead. The home runs were not over for Southern as in the sixth inning a Kusiak solo shot and Parker two run shot made it a 16-12 lead before the Gorillas scored two in the bottom half to cut the lead down to two.
The scoring in the seventh inning slowed down to just one run as a Rice solo home run to left field made it 17-14 for the team's eighth home run of the game, tying the single-game record set against Newman on Apr. 10th, 2021 in the teams 29-11 win at Warren Turner Field. In the eighth inning three more runs by the Lions proved more than enough to even the series up against rival Pittsburg State 20-16.Â
First pitch in the deciding game of the series is set for Sunday at 12:00pm from Al Ortolani Field.
