The Northern Illinois University baseball team overcame an early deficit Sunday afternoon against the Kent State Golden Flashes but it was the visitors that came away with a 9-8 win in 10 innings at Ralph McKinzie Field at Walt and Janice Owens Park.
“We were the better team for eight-and-a-half innings and we’re just not there in regards to knowing how to win,” said head coach Ryan Copeland. “It’s unfortunate because we played really well this weekend. We couldn’t close the game out and it always seem to come down to giving up free passes.”
NIU (12-26, 7-11 MAC) led 7-4 going into the top of the ninth. Jacob Draeger (Johnston, Iowa/Des Moines Area CC) entered the game from the bullpen and promptly retired Michael McNamara and Kolton Schaller for the first two outs of the inning. Lance Macdonald kept the inning alive with a double. Draeger then hit Ripken Reese with a pitch and walked Josh Johnson to load the bases. Matt Salomonson (Chicago, Ill./Notre Dame College Prep) then came in for Draeger on the mound. Tim Orr put Kent State ahead 8-7 with a grand slam over the left field wall. Salomonson then walked Kyle Jackson, who was later thrown out trying to steal second base to end the inning.
The Huskies manufactured the tying run in the bottom of the ninth. Colin Summerhill (Chicago, Ill./Troy) started the charge with a single to centerfield with one out. A CJ Cepicky (St. Louis, Mo./Missouri) got Summerhill to third base. Mason Kelley (Mt. Washington, Ky./Schoolcraft College) hit a groundball to McNamara at third, who threw to Reese at second base to start a potential double play. Reese bobbled the transfer on the throw to first as Summerhill scored to tie the game at 8-8.
Kent State (19-18, 10-8 MAC) took back the lead in the top of the 10th. Brody Williams drew a walk off of Jake Kohanzo (Barrington, Ill./Barrington) to lead off the inning. He later took second base on a wild pitch. Dom Kibler drove him in with a base hit to right field, making the score 9-8. The Huskies put the tying run on base in the bottom of the inning on a two-out Jake Nelson (Altoona, Wis./Madison College), but the Golden Flashes’ Peyton Cariaco got a strikeout to lock up the win and the series for Kent State.
The Golden Flashes took a 3-0 lead early on a two-run home run by McNamara in the second inning and a Jackson solo shot in the third. NIU got two runs back in the bottom of the third as a Nelson RBI single and a Summerhill sacrifice fly made the score 3-2. The Huskies took the lead in the bottom of the fourth as a two-out, two-run double by Andre Demetral (Rochester, Mich./Florence Darling Tech) put NIU up 4-3. Summerhill drove in the next two runs for NIU, a sacrifice fly in the fifth and a two-out solo home run in the seventh for his 17th of the year, to extend the Huskies’ lead to 6-3.
Freshman Alex Day (Tinley Park, Ill./Andrew) kept the Golden Flashes at bay, entering the game in relief of Dominic Hann (Washington, Mich./Michigan State) in the top of the fifth and throwing three shutout innings. Day allowed just one hit with no walks and three strikeouts. Kent State threatened to take the lead in the top of the eighth after an Orr leadoff home run made the score 6-4. After Jackson drew a walk, Sam Pederson (Verona, Wis./McHenry CC) got Williams to bounce into a double play for the first two outs of the inning. He then got Kibler to fly out to end the inning.
“Day was really good,” Copeland said. “He’s showed some promise throughout the season and the ability to go shut down lineups. To give us three shutout innings after Dominic [Hann] got us through four was impressive. Pederson bounced back after throwing yesterday and got the double play in the eighth and ended up winning that battle.”
The Huskies extended the lead to 7-4 in the bottom of the eighth on a run-scoring single by Charlie Parcell (Des Plaines, Ill./Maine West), his second hit of the game.
Seven of the nine Huskies in the starting batting order had at least two hits in the game Sunday. Summerhill was 3-for-3 with three RBI and two runs scored. The three hitters at the bottom of the order – Parcell, Demetral and Spencer Bartel (Sun Prairie, Wis./Madison College) – combined to go 6-for-13 with three RBI and three runs scored.
NIU wraps up its current homestand on Tuesday, April 23 against Valparaiso. First pitch is at 3 p.m.