St. Joseph, Mo. - The 16th ranked Missouri Southern baseball program hit four home runs in a series opening 9-3 win against Missouri Western at the Griffon Baseball Field on Friday, Apr. 28th to break a program record for home runs hit in a season.

The Lions (37-11, 24-7 MIAA) had home runs from Treghan Parker, Henry Kusiak, Chayton Beck and Drew Davis as Parker, Beck and Nate Mieszkowski finished with two RBIs each. Ethan Clark went 4-for-5 to lead the team in hits today. Cole Woods won his ninth game of the season with five strikeouts in six innings, Trent Harris struck out one in 1.0 inning and Cale McCallister struck out three in 2.0 innings.

In the first inning back-to-back home runs by Parker and Kusiak gave the Lions an early 2-0 lead and set a new program record for home runs in a single-season with the 98th and 99th home run hit of the season. Beck would hit the 100th home run of the season for Southern to become the first Division II team this season to have triple digit home runs as a team and gave the Lions a 4-1 lead heading to the 3rd inning.

Missouri Western (14-31, 10-21 MIAA) cut the lead in half in the third with a run to make it a 4-2 lead for Southern before back-to-back RBI hits by Mieszkowski and Parker pushed to lead up to 6-2. Matt Miller tripled home Ethan Clark in the fifth and a Mieszkowski RBI ground out in the fifth and sixth innings opened up a six point lead, 8-2 heading into the seventh inning. 

The Griffons got a run back in the seventh but a Davis home run in the eighth inning proved to solidify the final score 9-3.

Game two against Missouri Western will be on Saturday, Apr. 29th at the Griffon Baseball Field with first pitch set for 1:00pm.

Career Update
Henry Kusiak - Moved past Danny Rogers (1988-90) for the fifth most RBIs with 153 and is tied with Nathan Hughes (2001-04) for the seventh most hits with 217.

Cole Woods - Moved past Zac Shoemaker (2018-21) for fourth in strikeouts with 238.

Treghan Parker - Moved past Jordan Fitzpatrick (2020-22) for seventh in home runs with 29.

Matt Miller - Moved past Tim Casper (1988-91) for fourth in games played with 208.

Single-Season Update
Matt Miller - Moved past Jim Baranoski (1987 & 89), Joe Majeski (1987), Danny Rogers (1989) and Scott Madden (1992) for the fourth most RBIs with 69.

Nate Mieszkowski - Moved past Joe Lincoln (2010) for seventh in hits and is now tied with Chris Hoffman (2015) for sixth with 83 hits.

Treghan Parker - With his 15th home run of the season is tied for eighth with Matt Miller (2022), Max Hogan (2017) and Jacob Taylor (2010).

Cole Woods - Moved past Will Bausinger (2021) and Payton Walker (2015) for the eighth most strikeouts with 91. Read Full Article