Alton, IL – Crown baseball played Sunday morning with their season on the line in an elimination game against Wooster. The game was originally supposed to be on Saturday, but rain washed out all three games that were originally scheduled for Saturday. The regional essentially got pushed back a full day and resumed on Sunday.
Wooster would get on the board early with a solo home run to left to give the Fighting Scots an early 1-0 lead. Starting pitcher
Eric Newman really settled in after that leadoff home run however, striking out the next five Fighting Scots.
The Polars would respond in the bottom half of the second. In what ended up being a very long top half of the inning,
Kyle Schroedle reached with a leadoff single,
Rhys Dewick reached with a two out walk, and then
Cody Csulak came up big with a two out RBI single up the middle to tie things up.
Wooster would take the lead right back in the top of the third on a sacrifice fly to center to take a 2-1 lead. Both pitchers would settle in nicely over the next couple of innings, throwing a lot of strikes and not allowing a whole lot of traffic on either side.
In the sixth, Wooster would tack on another run on a wild pitch from Newman to extend the lead to 3-1. Wooster would tack on another run with a single to make it 4-1 and then would break it open with back-to-back home runs, one of the three run variety and Wooster took a commanding 8-1 lead.
The Polars would do their best to cut into the deficit in the bottom half of the frame.
Bailey Sarto led things off with a walk and then
Seth Betts launched a two-run shot to left center to cut the Wooster led to five.
The struggles on the mound continued for Crown in the top half of the seventh, Wooster hit back, to back, to back solo home runs to extend the lead to 11-3. They continued to slug later in the inning with a three-run home run to left to take a commanding 14-3 lead. Wooster would continue to score, tacking on five more runs in the top half of the eighth to extend the lead to 19-3. Wooster would go on to tack on a couple more runs and the final ended up being 21-3.
Crown finishes the 2022 season at 30-15, their best mark in program history. This team will also go down in the Crown record books as UMAC conference champions, and an NCAA Tournament appearance, just the third in school history. Congratulations Crown baseball on a fantastic season!
