May 10, 2008

Game 1 Stats
Game 2 Stats

Contact: Greg Murphy

FAIRBORN, Ohio - Cleveland State slipped back to .500 following a pair of losses at Wright State on Saturday afternoon in Horizon League action. The Vikings lost game one, 4-2, and fell in the nightcap, 11-6.

With the two setbacks, the Vikings fell to 20-23 overall and 9-9 in league play, while the Raiders improved to 27-19 overall and concludes its league slate with a 16-6 mark.

"Getting three games rained out last week and not being able to play this week because of finals really hurt our momentum," head coach Kevin Kocks said. "But we are not going to use that as an excuse. We are still weak in some areas and when we get exploited, we get exploited in a big way. We are in the middle of a building process and are going to keep working hard.

"Out biggest issue today was pitching. We hit eight batters and had four walks. Couple that with three errors and we gave them 17 free base runners and we can't do that against a team like Wright State."

In the opener, WSU scored two runs in the first on a two-run single from Justin Parker to claim an early lead.

It remained that way until the sixth when Kyle Bischof blasted a two-run homerun to knot the score at 2-2. However, the damage could have been more, but Brad Buell was thrown out stealing second base prior to Bischof's at-bat.

WSU broke the tie game in the sixth on a sacrifice fly from Ross Vagedes and added an insurance run in the eighth on a Gerald Ogrinc sacrifice fly.

Josh Hungerman (4-3) took the loss in the opener. He went 7.1 innings, giving up four runs on six hits with five strikeouts. Jon Durket picked up the win and improved to 5-2 this season, going 6.2 innings. He surrendered two runs on seven hits and fanned six.

Seven different Vikings had one hit apiece in the opener.

CSU jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the nightcap, but WSU used a pair of walks, a hit batter and RBI from Jeff Mercer and Vagedes to claim a 2-1 lead after the first.

The Raiders added two runs in both the second and third innings to extend their lead to 6-1.

However, CSU battled back with four runs in the fifth inning to slice its deficit to 6-5. But that would be as close as the Vikings would get as Sam Mote had an RBI double and Jeremy Hamilton drove in two with a double to give WSU a 9-5 lead after five innings. The Raiders added two more runs on a CSU error to extend the lead to 11-5.

CSU scored the final run of the contest in the seventh to account for the final score.

The Vikings have little time to dwell on today's sweep as CSU will hit the road and head to Chicago, Ill., for a doubleheader on Sunday (May 11). First pitch is slated for 12:00 p.m. at Les Miller Field.