Bone Strikes Out Three In SIUE Loss

The Cougars dropped to 6-7 overall and have lost three in a row. Western Illinois improved to 4-9.

Effingham's Braydon Bone came in to throw the final inning and struck out three.

"This is three games in a row that we've come up short in tight ballgames," SIUE Head Coach Sean Lyons said. "We were in it at the end, but we didn't get it done."

Western Illinois broke a 2-2 tie with a run in the seventh against SIUE reliever Quinn Waterhouse. The Leathernecks then scored three times in the eighth inning on three hits and an SIUE error to make it 6-2.

The Cougars pulled within a run in the bottom of the inning. SIUE plated three runs on two hits, three walks and a hit batter. Brady Bunten picked up and RBI-double and Ole Arntson collected an RBI when he was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. Parker Wielt forced home a run when he walked with the bases loaded. Steven Pattan appeared to be hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, which would have tied the game. Instead, the home plate umprire ruled Pattan did not get out of the way of the pitch and called the Cougar catcher out on strikes. The Cougars left the bases loaded when the inning ended.

"Late in the game the miscue came back to haunt us and allowed them to have the big inning and separate things," Lyons said. "Our guys did a nice job to try to get back in it in the bottom half of the inning."

Waterhouse (0-1) suffered the loss. He allowed the single run over 3 2/3 innings. He struck out three.

Griffin Bruder started for SIUE and allowed two runs on two hits in 3 1/3 innings. He struck out one and walked six.

"Things started slowly for us," Lyons added. "We didn't get off on the right foot across the board. On the mound, we put a lot of guys on base with free passes."

SIUE managed two runs on five hits over the first seven innings. Johnny Beck started and worked five innings allowing a run on three hits. He struck out three.

"Beck did a pretty nice job of keeping us off balance," Lyons said. "We didn't make the adjustments that we needed to to get things going offensively."

Reliever Jacob Greenan (1-0) earned the win for Western Illinois. He allowed a run in two innings.

Ethan Copeland was the only SIUE player with more than a hit. He was 2-5. Raul Elguezabal was 1-3 with a double, a run and an RBI.

SIUE goes on the road to continue Ohio Valley Conference play with a weekend series at Belmont.

"We just didn't play a very good brand of baseball today," Lyons said. "We need to clean things up as we move forward and definitely going into this weekend at Belmont."