The Journey: Wright State

Junior Sam Sivilotti and sophomore Greg Blohowiak, members of the UWM baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website. This is their 10th entry.

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With much anticipation extinguished, our 8-hour busride was underway toward Dayton, Ohio. We are playing one of our more intense Horizon League series’ of the year, Wright State University. Wright State earned a berth to the NCAA Regional last year, winning the Horizon League tournament for their bid. They are a very good team and are top-20 in the nation in hitting this year. However good they may be on paper, we know we are just as good, if not better, and are able to take the series. To add some more incentive we currently are two and a half games back of them for 1st place in the league. In order to take over 1st place we would need to sweep them on the weekend, a hefty task, which can certainly be done.

We arrive in Dayton on our shortened Lamers bus, which allowed for the coaches to drive themselves, in humid 80-degree weather, and received our room assignments and went to bed. With alot of stress put on the treacherous weather that could be seen in the Dayton area we woke up and kept our eyes on the radar to see what we had in store. With a severe thunderstorm watch, as well as a tornado watch, put in place we boarded the bus on our way to the field. The temperature was probably 83 degrees when we began batting practice and concluded our pregame activities.

The game started with both pitchers earning 0’s in the first inning of work. Junior Chad Pierce once again toed the rubber for us on this Friday night and was throwing much better a week after his shortened Valpo appearance. Our offense got on the board first with a 5-run explosion in the top of the 2nd inning. We gained runs off the bats of Hoenecke (double), Buchholz (single), and Shaun Wegner (double, 3 rbi). Guerrero was walked to load the bases to lead up to the bases-clearing by Wegner. Following Wegner was junior Cole Kraft, who took the first pitch over the left field wall for a 2-run homerun. Following another scoreless frame from both teams Wright State proved to be the hitting team they are perceived to be. Wright State answered with five of their own runs in the bottom of the 4th inning with a few singles as well as a walk and HBP. Four runs in that inning were unearned, as we had 2 errors in the inning resulting in scoring plays.

After a few more innings of 0’s for our offense and a one-spot for WSU in the bottom of the 5th, we had a score of 6-5 going into the top of the 7th inning. Many times this year we found ourselves in this situation. In games past we couldn't find the extra hit in order to plate a run, but with nothing but a win in mind we dug into the batters box and scored two runs to take the lead. Following a couple strikeouts and a walk senior Ben Long laced a ball to the right center gap for a double. With runners on 2nd and 3rd, senior Tim Patzman came to the plate with the chance to take the lead. Tim, like he has all year, stepped up in the clutch and hit a triple to right center, which proved to be his final collegiate hit.

In the bottom half of the inning Pierce cruised through the first two batters of the inning and seemed to be out of the inning when Wright State’s center fielder Ryan Ashe hit a tailing ball to left field. Today was a day where wind was definitely a factor, at times gusting to 33 mph, out to left. The ball carried all the way to the wall and Tim Patzman attempted to make the catch causing him to crash into the wall. When all was said and done, Ashe got a triple and Tim Patzman had to be taken out of the game. Later on in the night we found out he broke his elbow and we lost him for the rest of the year. With a runner on third Pierce was relieved by sophomore Greg Blohowiak. Walking the first batter on four-straight pitches, Blohowiak did what was necessary and got a ground ball to 2nd base to end the threat. In the top half of the 8th, we extended our lead to two runs when Paul Hoenecke, Nino Guerrero and Shaun Wegner all strung hits together to plate another run.

After walking the first batter he faced in the 8th inning, Blohowiak was relieved by sophomore Cameron Amsrud, our closer. He got a ground ball to defensive substitute Jimmy Lundstrom, who make a spectacular play by tagging the runner to second and firing the ball to first to get the double play. It was a huge play in the game that squashed any momentum Wright State had. Jimmy had been sitting on the bench for the whole game and he came in and proved why he is in for defensive purposes.

Another run was scored by us in the top half of the 9th and Cameron came in and closed the door getting the three out off a hard-hit ground ball right to his belly. We win 9-6, beginning our attempt at a series sweep on the right foot.

Following the game it was a relatively low key night at the hotel considering by the time we got changed and finished with dinner it was already 11:30 p.m. local time. Off to bed in preparation for a crucial day.

Game two of the series was slated for a 1:00 start. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t recognize this until about the third inning when we were already down 12-0. The game continued to be a living nightmare as the Raiders went on to win 20-3. Not much to say other than we now need to salvage game three and come away with a series win while pulling a game closer on Wright State.

Game three turned out to be quite the shootout as both offenses were relentless on the opponent. Jeff Gordon faced off against Raider pitcher Jon Durket, both of whom are California natives, something fairly uncommon to see in the Midwest. Gordon went a strong five innings for us allowing five earned. His numbers simply do not justify the effort he gave us on the hill. He battled all game and kept a potent Wright State offense in check. Durket on the other hand was not so lucky. His day concluded after 2.2 innings after allowing five runs all earned in the top half of the third frame. Following Durket was Jordan Marker for Wright State who also threw 2.2 while allowing four of his own to cross the plate. The scoring in the fourth began when Cole Kraft doubled to left center. Following Kraft, Shaun Wegner hit his second home run of the season extending the lead to 7-0 at that point. Wright state would respond by putting a three spot up in the fourth and another solo run in the fifth closing the gap to 7-4. We then countered with another three spot of our own in the sixth when Nino Guerrero, Cole Kraft, Shaun Wegner, Dan Buccholz and Paul Hoenecke all singled in the frame. Wright State would then go on to tack on two more in the bottom of the sixth and then one in the bottom of the seventh but their effort was not mighty enough, as we closed out the game 10-7 on the back of Luke Annen who came in and relieved Gordon. All together it was a successful weekend as we took the series and closed the gap on the conference leaders, just wishing we could have game two back.

The bus ride home was fairly energetic, as we were excited on the successful season. Arrived home to Milwaukee around 11:30 local time and it was off to sleep as the last week of formal classes was ahead of us along with a very crucial four game conference weekend against Butler and UIC.