SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS –
Kris Looper (Wharton/Wharton HS) earned his first career win and helped the University of the Incarnate Word baseball secure their first Southland Conference series win of season with a 5-4 win in the rubber match against Stephen F. Austin Sunday at Sullivan Field.
Looper threw 2.1 innings in relief of
Brandon Anderson (Cheyenne, WY/Cheyenne Central HS) who pitched 6.2 innings allowing seven hits, four runs and two walks while striking out four. Looper only allowed one hit, no walks and struck out four. His last outing was a start against Baylor on Tuesday where he threw a complete game, but took a 2-1 loss.
The Cardinals (13-25, 4-14) got on the board first after
Colton Besett (Cedar Park/Vista Ridge HS) led off the third inning with a walk,
Blake Woosley (Corvallis, OR/Philomath HS) singled to center which moved Besett to third and then
Mark Whitehead (San Antonio/Johnson HS) grounded out to second to bring in the run and collect his first of two RBI's on the day.
In the fifth inning, UIW scored a couple of runs with some help from a few Lumberjacks miscues. Besett hit a pop up in the infield that dropped between Nick Ramos and Dan O'Neill for a single and would later come in to score on a Whitehead single to center field.
Matt Morris (Scottsdale, AZ/Saguaro HS) then hit a doubled to left field to bring in Whitehead.
Anderson had a shutout into the seventh inning by getting out of trouble a few times earlier in the game, but the Lumberjacks (13-27, 7-13 SLC) finally got to him in the seventh with four runs. SFA took the lead, 4-3 with four hits in the inning, including a triple from Kyle Thornell.
Despite the Cardinals being down a run and having lost by 17 runs the previous game, they never gave up. "My concern was that after they took a 4-3 lead, how were we going to react," UIW head coach
Danny Heep said. "I wanted to see us get back in the ballgame, score a couple more runs and come from behind. It's all about competing and that's exactly what we did. I was proud of them."
What Heep was proud of was his Cardinals responding with two runs in the bottom of the seventh to regain the lead, 5-4. Whitehead singled with one out and advanced to third on a failed pickoff attempt. After Morris took a four-pitch walk,
Jesse Hoover (Marion/Marion HS) doubled to right center field to bring both of the runners in.
Leading off in the last inning for the Lumberjacks was Tyler Boxwell. He hit a ball that looked like at least a leadoff double, but Whitehead somehow got to it and made a spectacular running grab to prevent the tying run from getting on base. Looper retired the next two batters to lock up the win.
"I was pretty frustrated after hitting into a double play right before and when I saw that ball hit, I knew I wasn't going to let that drop," Whitehead said.
The wild game ended almost two hours and forty minutes after the first pitch and Travis Stone was tabbed with loss, while Looper improved to 1-4 with the win.
Whitehead and Hoover led the way for the Cardinals with a pair of RBI's each, while Whitehead scored two runs. Besett finished 1-for-2 with a walk and two runs scored.
The Cardinals pounded nine hits and committed one error, while SFA collected eight hits and also had an error in the game.
The Cardinals hit the road on Tuesday for a 6 p.m. game at nationally-ranked TCU.
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