Zac Carey salvages another poor Mid-American Conference series for the Bowling Green
baseball team.
The true freshman threw his best game thus far, giving the Falcons 7.1 innings of one-run ball and notching his first collegiate victory, 8-2.
Carey was able to keep the Northern Illinois hitters off balance all day, getting 11 to flyout while inducing another eight groundouts. He walked just one batter.
“We obviously needed somebody to step up for us and Zac Carey gave us a great performance on the mound today,” head coach Danny Schmitz said.
Carey got plenty of run support as well. BG had struggled to score over its last seven games — all losses.
Trey Keegan helped lead the way, going 3-4 with a solo-homerun, including an RBI single in the first to get the Falcons on the board.
Keegan had help at the plate, too.
Kory Brown and Derek Drewes each had mutli-hit days as well, combining for 5 RBIs and two runs.
Drewes smacked the biggest hit of the day for BG. In the top of the fifth inning, Drewes collected his first career hit — a two-out, go-ahead RBI single — bringing Brown around to score, breaking
the 1-1 tie.
“We’ve struggled lately offensively, so it was nice to see the guys swing the bats well and get some big hits,” Schmitz said. “Derek Drewes’ first career hit was a big go-ahead RBI for us and really sparked us.”
This sparked a five-run sixth inning for the Falcons led by Brown and Drewes, each collecting a two-RBI single.
This put the Huskies away as BG stretched its lead to 7-1.
The win snapped a 10-game losing streak for the Falcons.
BG still lost the MAC series, losing the first two games of the series to NIU.
On Friday, the Huskies picked on Andrew Lacinak early and jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning after the — what should have been an inning-ending groundout — was not converted.
BG answered in the fourth with two runs of its own, but NIU answered right back with nine runs in the bottom of the inning off of Lacinak and Devin Daugherty en route to a 12-3 win over the Falcons.
The Falcons scored another run late, but two errors and and just four players collecting a hit, did them in.
The second game of the series, the first of the Saturday doubleheader featured a near-similar result with Jason Link on the mound.
BG managed to score first with two runs in the third on a two-RBI double from Brandon Howard. But, the Falcons were held scoreless over the final six frames.
From inning four to seven, the Huskies scored all 11 of their runs, including five in the fifth and four in the sixth, to put the Falcons away again.
BG is now 6-16 overall, 1-5 in the MAC after losing the series dropping two of three to NIU.
