The Falcon baseball team was swept by the Alabama-Birmingham Blazers, falling on Sunday 6-2 after losing 4-2 on Saturday night and 3-2 on Friday night.
“This is not how we wanted to start our season,” Falcons head coach Danny Schmitz said. “We played well this weekend in stretches, but you aren’t going to win baseball games unless you can execute for a full nine innings.”
Sunday’s game saw Alabama-Birmingham jump out to the early lead with a 3 RBI double in the first inning. However, the Falcons were able to get a run back in the fourth with a sacrifice fly from junior catcher Jeff Scott to make it a 3-1 game. Alabama-Birmingham restored their lead in the bottom of the inning with an RBI single. In the sixth, Alabama-Birmingham added to their lead by scoring a run on a fielding error and an RBI sacrifice fly. While Scott added a solo home run for the Falcons, it would not be enough, as Alabama-Birmingham took the 6-2 victory.
On Saturday, the Falcons got off to a strong start with junior infielder Ty Suntken getting an RBI single in a bases-loaded situation in the second inning. However Alabama-Birmingham was able to stop any further damage from that inning. The Falcons doubled their lead in the fourth, as junior infielder Cam Daugherty hit a solo home run. The team held a 2-0 advantage. In the eighth inning, however, Alabama-Birmingham was able to tie it up on a 2 RBI single, followed by a run coming across on a passed ball to take the lead. Alabama-Birmingham tacked on another run on a fielding error, as they held on in the ninth to take the 4-2 win.
“We have to play a complete game and we have to get through the eighth inning,” Schmitz said. “The effort was good, we played a solid game and had good performances. Daugherty gave us our first home run of the season and defensively we played well, but we just need to score more runs.”
Friday’s game also featured a strong start for the Falcons in the first inning, taking advantage of an error followed by a 2 RBI single from senior infielder Derek Drewes to give the team a 3-0 advantage early. However, Alabama-Birmingham was able to get a run back in the bottom of the inning on an RBI single.
Alabama-Birmingham cut the lead in half in the third inning on an RBI sacrifice fly, then evened it up at 3-3 with an RBI single in the fourth inning. The game remained tied up until the bottom of the eighth, when Alabama-Birmingham scored the go-ahead run on a fielding error to go on to take the 4-3 win.
“We played a really good game,” Schmitz said. “It was difficult getting out on the field after not being out there for three months, we struck out 13 times which is way too many, that’s almost half our outs right there, but we definitely had some good things, we had nine hits for the game, we played really good, it was just unfortunate that we had the error late in the game.”
The team will next play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons against the Southeast Missouri State Redhawks.
