CARY, N.C. –The two-seeded Columbus State attacked early on their way to a 8-1 victory over No. 7 seed Mercyhurst University on Sunday in the fourth game of the 2018 Division II Baseball Championship.
The championship is being held at the USA Baseball National Training Complex, and is being co-hosted by the Town of Cary and the University of Mount Olive.
From there, the Cougars rode the arm of Kolton Ingram to the win, which advances Columbus State into a Tuesday night winner’s bracket game.
Augustana found a way to score early in the contest in an unusaual way as after Michael Svozil and Sam Baier got on with one out singles, Ryan Nickel drew a two out walk following a fielder’s choice to load the bases. The Vikings saw two runners walk home after back-to-back balks were called and AU took the game’s first lead.
The fifth inning Augustana found more offence off the bat of Ryan Menssen as he belted a shot over the left field wall for a solo home run extending the lead to 3-0. The Vikings added two more runs off a dropped fly ball in left as the error moved the AU lead to 5-0 after the third.
After four scoreless innings for Florida Southern the Mocs finally struck for a run in the top of the fifth as Jacob Teter singled through the right side to begin the inning. A walk and a Dylan Costa single loaded the bases with no one out.
Cody Burgess picked up an RBI on fielder’s choice and draw the deficit to 5-1. Another fielder’s choice allowed a run to score as Pablo Cabrera picked up the RBI for the Mocs.
Omar Villaman singled to left center with one away in the sixth to start the Mocs attack. Logan Browning followed suit with a double down the left field line and scored Villaman. Teter then one out later drove in another run as the score moved to 5-4 still in favor of Augustana.
The Vikings answered with a single run in the bottom half to push their lead back to two, 6-4.
The top of eighth had some fireworks as Austin Mauer led off the inning for Florida Southern with a solo home run down the left field line and gave FSC more life, but Augustana held off any more runs from crossing the plate and the game headed into the ninth.
Florida Southern started off with Christian Maglich drawing an eight pitch walk to put the tying run on base. Costa then used a sacrifice bunt to move Maglich into scoring position for the first out of the inning. Another sacrifice, this time a deep fly ball to right center, moved Maglich 90 feet from tying the game up for the Mocs. The final out was recorded and Augustana took the game 6-5.
Quotes
Augustana
Head coach Tim Huber
“It was a really good baseball game, competitive all the way around. We got out early and scored several runs – two in the first, three in the second. Who would have known that we would get a big two-out, two-strike hit from (number nine hitter) JT Mix that ended up being the difference-maker for us.”
Catcher Ryan Menssen
“For the most part, when we get out to a lead, we play pretty well and pretty loose. But any time you’re going up against a good team like Florida Southern, you know they’re going to come back. We just had to withstand it.”
“It’s a lot of fun when you’re in situations like that. You play a lot of games throughout your entire career for moments like that. Especially for me as a catcher, when you see (the tying run) on third base, I’m locked in.”
Third baseman Lucas Barry
“I don’t think we took our foot off the gas. Their pitcher did quite a good job of mixing pitches. We could have had better approaches at the plate, but it is what it is.”
Florida Southern
Head coach Lance Niekro
“It’s frustrating to look back at those first two innings and see that were not prepared mentally. We had two balks in the first inning to allow two runs, and the dropped fly ball in the second inning to allow another two runs. That’s not taking anything away from Augustana. They’ve got a great team and they played really well. But it’s just frustrating for us to look back and know that it had a negative impact for us in the game.”
“The most important thing for us the next two days is to get caught up on some rest. We’ve been through a lot in the last two weeks.”
Catcher Austin Mauer
“It says a lot about this team that we were able to fight and come back from (being down) 5-0. It was early in the game, so we weren’t stressing too much. But we were able to chip away, a couple of runs here and there.”
First baseman Jacob Teter
“We’ve come from behind a lot this year, had a few walk-off wins. I don’t think we were uncomfortable for one second in that spot, just because we’ve been there so much. There’s always a fighting chance with a lot of game left.”