St. Paul, Minn. – Needing a sweep to keep their playoff hopes alive, the Crown baseball team dropped all three games to the University of Northwestern – St. Paul, finishing the UMAC season in seventh place with a 7-14 record. Crown's bats woke up late in the third game of the series, but even that outburst wouldn't be enough as the Eagles scored 35 runs in the three games.
Game one on Friday night saw the Storm jump out to an early lead when
Harry Ballantyne scored on a Northwestern Throwing error. The Eagles would score nine unanswered runs, however, to win 9-1.
Daryl Taylor and
Dalton Wintersole collected three hits apiece for Crown.
Saturday brought a double-header between the two teams, with Northwestern once again asserting their dominance early. The Eagles jumped out to a 12-0 lead after just two innings and coasted to a 14-3 victory. Taylor collected two more hits and Wintersole clubbed a three run home run in the loss.
Game two would get off to an equally disastrous start for Crown as the Storm fell behind 11-0 through five innings. What looked to be a run-rule shortened game quickly turned as the Crown bats woke from their weekend long slumber.
Seth Herdle started things off for the Storm with an RBI single before Wintersole hit a grand slam, pulling Crown back to within 11-5. After an error allowed another run to score, Northwestern tacked on a run on a double steal in the bottom of the seventh to make the score 12-6
.
Travis Walker than hit a run scoring single with the bases loaded in the eighth that was followed up by
David Sherwood with another Crown grand slam! That made the score 12-11 and after holding in the eighth, Crown couldn't find one more run and dropped the game by the same score.
Matthew Tate and
Joel Silva each collected three hits, while Taylor, Wintersole, and
David Cruz added two hits each.
Crown wraps up their 2015 campaign with a set of four non-conference games against Finlandia University on Monday and Tuesday in Cologne.
