HAYS, Ks. — An early 7-2 over lead over Fort Hays State wasn't meant to be for Griffon Baseball on Thursday night, as the Tigers took game one of the series in dramatic fashion at Larks Park.
Fort Hays' Brady Kreutzer called game with a solo walk-off home run to left field to beat Missouri Western, 8-7 — giving the Tigers their first win in nearly a month. The game-deciding pitch was thrown with one out on an 0-1 count by
Samson Holcomb (1-4), the only run given up in his 2.1 innings on the mound. Jacob Douglas (1-0) pitched five innings in relief of Conner Kessler, striking out three Griffons while only giving up three hits.
Most of Missouri Western's (8-27, 5-20 MIAA) hits came early, including
Brenden Andersen's RBI knock through the left side to score
Brady Holden in the first inning. Holden carried that momentum into the second with two ribbies of his own on a base hit to right, scoring
Will Courtney and
Ryan Neise. Fort Hays (4-33, 3-22 MIAA) scored two of their own in the bottom half of the frame, but Missouri Western was just warming up.
Brenden Andersen blistered a solo shot to left-center field to put MWSU up 4-2 in the third. One inning later, the Griffons tallied three more runs thanks to an two-run hit by Holden and RBI groundout by
Riley Higgins. Soon after that is when things came unglued for the Griffons.
The bottom of the fifth featured a three-run bomb by Grant Schmidt off of
Jordan Akins that brought it to a 7-5 game. The Tigers kept chipping away with a single run in the sixth and the game-tying score in the seventh, priming Kreutzer for his late-game pop that ends a 14-game losing streak. Before Thursday, FHSU's last win came way of a 15-10 slugfest with Newman University on March 15 in Wichita, Kansas.
NOTABLES
NEXT UP
Game two of the series is set for Friday at 4 p.m. back at Larks Park.
