Baseball battles No. 1-seed Transy before falling in 11 innings
LEXINGTON, Kentucky – On Friday night, the Defiance College baseball team opened play in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship tournament on the road versus the Transylvania University Pioneers and fell in a heartbreaker, 11-9 in 11 innings, at Whitaker Bank Ballpark, home of the Lexington Legends.
| Final (11) | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 12 | 3 |
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1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 16 | 3 |
LEXINGTON, Kentucky – On Friday night, the Defiance College baseball team opened play in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship tournament on the road versus the Transylvania University Pioneers and fell in a heartbreaker, 11-9 in 11 innings, at Whitaker Bank Ballpark, home of the Lexington Legends.
The first round of the tournament consists of best-of-three series taking place at the higher seeds. Defiance is seeded 10th while Transylvania, the 2021 HCAC regular-season champion, is the top seed.
Friday's game had the Pioneers taking a 5-0 lead after three innings before the Yellow Jackets scored twice in the fourth. Each squad plated a run in sixth inning to make it 6-3, but a five-run outburst in the eighth by DC gave the guests an 8-6 edge. Transy tied the contest in the bottom of the eighth and the matchup went into extra innings. After Defiance pushed a run across in the top of the 11th inning, the hosts ended the game with a two-run, walk-off home run with two outs in the bottom half.
The Yellow Jackets came up with 12 hits to TU's 16 and each team made three errors. DC had just one extra-base hit, a double, while Transylvania tallied three doubles and a pair of homers. Defiance stranded 11 base runners and the Pioneers 10.
Offensively, Nate Kaffenbarger led the Yellow Jackets with three hits, including a double, walk, two runs scored and run batted in while Colin Minner finished 2 for 4 with a hit-by-pitch, couple of runs scored and sacrifice fly. Dylan King, Josh Vischer and Lucas Thomeier each contributed a hit and two RBIs.
Will Bohlman got the start on the mound for DC and threw three innings. Defiance used four pitchers out of the bullpen, including Tyler Hines (allowed two hits and no walks over two scoreless innings), Daniel Tomalak (gave up one hit with one strikeout and no earned runs in one inning) and Jack Powell (pitched a perfect seventh with two strikeouts). Cohen Nies absorbed the loss after tossing the final 3.2 innings with five strikeouts and one walk.
The Jackets slip to 6-32 overall while Transy improves to 27-10. The squads are scheduled to meet for game two of the series on Saturday at 1 p.m. If a third and deciding contest is needed, it will begin approximately 30 minutes following the conclusion of Saturday's first game.