Bradley’s baseball team made the trip south to Nashville on Feb. 25 and 26and walked away winning one of three games at the Music City Challenge.
The Braves dropped their first game Friday 4-3 against ACC member Pittsburgh and finished off the Friday doubleheader with a 14-0 loss against ASUN opponent Lipscomb.
In game one, senior Grant Jasuel pitched seven innings, allowing two earned runs to go with four strikeouts. Sophomore TJ Manteufel and freshman Jack Lincoln led the Braves with two hits each in the affair, with the latter adding two RBIs. Senior Connor O’Brien had the only other RBI.
After a promising start to the ninth inning, where the Braves were trailing 4-3, Bradley stranded runners in scoring position and ultimately fell by one run.
The second half of the double-header against Lipscomb was a different story and can be summed up in one word: walks.
The Bisons were given 15 free passes by the Braves, between 12 walks and three batters hit by pitches. The Braves only allowed six hits, but the walks were too much to overcome. Bradley struggled to get their bats going as well, as they only strung together three hits.
On Saturday, Bradley had the opportunity to win their final game in Nashville as they matched up against Pittsburgh once again. Freshman Jacob Kisting took the hill and threw a gem of seven innings of one-run ball, helping his team walk away with a 3-2 win.
“I think, honestly, the biggest thing that was working for me was my defense,” Kisting said. “We had plenty of ground balls [and] plenty of fly balls that gave them the opportunity to make some plays, and then we had two or three double plays up the middle. Middle infield and outfield especially [made]some really, really big plays for me.”
Sophomore outfielder Ryan Vogel went 2-for-3 with one run on the day and his biggest hit came in the sixth inning, which was a leadoff double that sparked the rest of the lineup. O’Brien followed up with a single, redshirt freshman and designated hitter Peter Hansen drove in Vogel with a squeeze bunt and Manteufel followed on a bunt to load the bases. Senior Keaton Rice and sophomore Carson Husmann had back-to-back sacrifice flies to give the team a 3-1 lead.
Sophomore Taylor Catton came in to pitch the ninth, and after allowing a solo home run, shut Pittsburgh down to earn his first save of the season as Bradley moved to 3-3 on the season.
“He had a lot of movement and struck out a good amount of guys so I scooted up in the box to try to take away some of the movement,” Vogel said of his at-bat in the sixth inning. “The second [pitch], he grooved me another one, kind of a gift fastball down the middle, and I was just really short to it trying to rip the gap. I think that sparked us.”
Every baseball team will have big losses, like the Braves had against Lipscomb, but the Braves are proud of taking a game against a Power Five school in Pittsburgh.
“We understood we were better than both those teams,” Vogel said. “The second game got out of hand, and the first game we really should’ve won. We left a lot of guys on base, but [Pittsburgh] made a lot of really good plays, a lot of diving plays that could’ve ended up in 1-2 runs. I think we knew that was a team we needed to beat, and Coach Dominguez stressed that he knew we could beat them and we went out and took it to them the next day.”
Bradley continues their time away from Dozer Park as they head to Cape Girardeau, Missouri for a three-game series as they play Southeast Missouri State this weekend. SEMO (6-1) is fresh off a series victory against MVC juggernaut Dallas Baptist.
“We’ve got our hands cut out for us and we’re just going to have to execute, especially on the mound, and try to scratch away a couple runs and hopefully we can walk away with a couple of wins,” Bradley head coach Elvis Dominguez said.
