Colby Nips MCC Baseball 11-10
The Colby Community College baseball team built an 11-3 lead through six innings Wednesday and held on for an 11-10 win over McCook Community College.
MCC mounted a comeback with three runs in the bottom of the sixth, two in the eight and added two more in the ninth but couldn't complete the reversal. Five MCC pitchers issued 11 walks and hit two batters.
"Baseball has been around a long time and one thing that hasn't changed is if you give up too many free passes you're going to have a hard time holding teams down and that's what happened today," said MCC Coach Jon Olsen. "We had been keeping the free passes down as of late but we just couldn't today."
Colby scored three runs in the second, but MCC countered with an RBI-groundout by Kyler Cox (Hayes Center).
Freshman Brady Augustin (Surrey, British Columbia) started on the mound and allowed two earned runs in two innings on four hits, a walk and two strikeouts.
Colby added two runs in both the third and fourth inning to take a 7-1 lead. The Indians got a solo home run in the bottom of the inning on a leadoff home run by sophomore Will Edwards (Sydney, Australia) and added another run on a double by Jason Serafinchon (Spruce Grove, Alberta) and a wild pitch to make it a 7-3 game.
The Trojans added a run in the fifth and three in the sixth to go up 11-3.
Sophomore Blake Benallo (Thornton, Colo.) pitched 1.2 innings and surrendered three earned runs. Sophomore Dylan Huddle (Arvada, Colo.) went 1.1 innings and allowed one earned run on one hit, one walk and a strikeout. Freshman Jean Duran (San Carlos, Dominican Republic) pitched in the fifth and allowed two earned runs on a hit, two walks and two strikeouts.
"I was happy with the way we battled back after we got down just couldn't quite get over the top at the end," said Olsen. "We just have to get back out tomorrow and play better."
In the MCC sixth, redshirt freshman Josh Jedretich (Melbourne, Australia) made it an 11-6 game with a bases-loaded RBI-double. MCC got two in the eighth on a single by freshman Owen Glover (Elderslice, New South Wales), two walks, a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly by Jedretich to make it an 11-8 game.
Zack Lane (Phoenix, Ariz.) pitched the final three innings for the Indians and kept the Trojans off the scoreboard allowing one hit, no walks and he struck out two.
Sophomore Jake Quinlivan (Sydney, Australia) powered a two-run homer in the ninth and made it an 11-10 game with no outs, but the next three hitters went down in order.
MCC outhit Colby 11-8. Glover had three hits for MCC. Serefinchon, Quinlivan and sophomore Michael Quick (Oshawa, Ontario) all hit two-hit games.
Colby goes to 7-25 on the season.
The loss snaps a six-game win streak for the Indians who go to 20-18.
This weekend MCC hosts Luna Community College in a four-game Region IX series at the Jaycees Sports Complex. Doubleheaders are set for 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
MCC is tied for second in the Region IX standings at 12-4. Southeast Community College tops the Empire League with a 14-2 mark. Western Nebraska is tied with MCC in second at 12-4, with Otero 9-7. Luna is 1-15 and in eighth place in the standings and 2-36 overall.
At the end of the season the top six teams in the standings will advance to the post-season tournament in Colorado Springs May 9-12 in a single game, double-elimination tournament. The top two seeds will earn a first-round bye with the third seed playing the sixth seed and the fourth seed playing the fifth seed.
All the latest information for MCC baseball including up-to-date schedule and changes as well as statistics, rosters and photos can be found on the MCC Athletics website, www.mccindians.com
