Brian Moos / Sports Director

On Saturday, April 11, St. Cloud State baseball hosted Winona State for the final matchup of a three-game series. After winning games one and two through a double-header on Friday, the Huskies trailed the Warriors early. The Warriors opened up scoring with a solo homerun from Dylan Harer. That gave Husky pitcher and leadoff hitter Hayden Frank an early blemish on his stat line. Winona State would add another run through an RBI single by Boone Kirst to finish the first inning up 2-0.

The Huskies would generate an offensive response in the bottom of the second. Hits strung together by Nick Ibrahim, Max Robinson and Dawson Schmidt would tie the game up at 2-2. SCSU built on that quickly in the third, as Nick Ibrahim would bring two Huskies across home plate with a single into right field. The finishing touches of the third was an RBI double from Max Robinson to give the Huskies a 5-2 lead.

The Warriors responded with two runs to cut the lead down to one in the fourth. St. Cloud nullified that push though, answering with two in the bottom of that same inning. Then Winona State blew the game wide open. In the top of the fifth, the Warriors loaded the bases on the Huskies, forced a pitching change and trotted home six runs. The Warriors got a two RBI single from Connor Weed, but every other run was driven in by walks or wild pitches on a wet Joe Faber Field.

With the Huskies down 10-7 the rain started picking up in the bottom of the fifth inning. The Huskies and Warriors aimed to finish the fifth, but right before the first delay, two Huskies and one Warrior got ejected from a confrontation at home plate. It was during an at-bat for SCSU’s Wyatt Tweet, he and Warriors catcher Max Peterson got face to face and jawed. A few players left their dugouts, SCSU’s Josh McGuin pushed Peterson away from Tweet. McGuin, Tweet and Peterson were shown the exit when a 30-minute rain delay began.

The Huskies would score one run after a rare sacrifice fly to second base from Willmis Castro scored Ryan Cahoon from third. The Warriors would plate another two runs off a homer from Connor Weed, but the game was officially called off during the away half of the sixth. The contest reached five full innings and will go down as a 10-8 loss for the Huskies, despite the home run for the Warriors in the sixth.

The Huskies fall to 18-16 on the year but still are in a good spot towards the top of the NSIC at 14-7. They will travel down to the cities on Wednesday to take on Concordia-St. Paul in a double header at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Coverage of the Huskies short road trip will be on 97.5 FM RadioX.