The Kennesaw State baseball team opened their season at home with a 2-1 record in the Atlanta Classic this weekend with back-to-back victories to end the series.
After dropping the first game of their season, 15-11, against Virginia Commonwealth, the Owls beat Purdue, 5-2, on Saturday, and Western Michigan, 7-4, on Sunday.
“I told the guys that after losing on Friday night, to come back and get the next two wins says a lot about them,” KSU head coach Mike Sansing told Nathan McCreary Sunday’s win.
Sophomore Austin Upshaw was the MVP of the weekend, hitting a homerun in each of the three games to go along with six hits and four RBIs.
“I’ve always known he can hit,” Sansing said. “He has a really great swing.”
The Owls jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first inning on Sunday — hitting for the cycle as a team — with a homerun from senior catcher Brennan Morgan and a triple from Grant Williams. The Western Michigan Broncos cut the deficit to a single run in the third, with RBI singles from Grant Miller and Jesse Forestell.
KSU responded with a three-run fourth inning, with an RBI double from Chris Erwin to drive in two of the runs. Upshaw laid down a sacrifice to contribute the third run, scoring Erwin from third.
The Broncos added a run off of a homerun by Forestell in the sixth inning and a final run in the ninth, but they ultimately fell short in their comeback attempt as they left the bases loaded on a flyout to deep center field to end the game. Eric Stahl made his second appearance as an Owl in the frame, allowing one run. Starter AJ Moore received his first win of the season, throwing for five innings and allowing just three hits in the matchup.
In their Saturday matchup, the Owls took a 5-2 victory over the Purdue Boilermakers behind the pitching of starter Gabe Friese. Friese earned his first win of the season, allowing two hits and recording five strikeouts in just under five innings. Richard Lovelady and Eric Stahl combined for 2.1 innings of scoreless baseball to nail down the season’s first win, after the Boilermakers cut the lead to three runs in the seventh inning.
Upshaw led off the scoring with a homerun to right field in the second inning, and was later followed by an RBI triple from Chris Erwin in the fourth to extend the lead. Alex Liquori and Griffin Helms would also each contribute RBI singles to bring Kennesaw’s lead to four runs. In the sixth inning, junior outfielder Jordan Getzelman recorded a sacrifice fly to drive in a run, giving the Owls their largest lead of the day, 5-0.
The Friday season opener started off disappointingly, with KSU falling behind to the VCU Rams 14-0 by the third inning. Despite outhitting VCU 18-11, and outscoring them 11-1 over the final six frames, the Owls were too far in the hole to fly out of the deficit.
Offensively, KSU had 11 players record a hit, with five players recording multi-hit games. Upshaw started off his strong weekend by going 3-5 with a home run, which he hit in the eighth inning, to get the Owls within eight runs at the time, trailing 14-6.
KSU added four additional runs in the ninth, but the efforts of Brennan Morgan and Jeremy Howell, who contributed an RBI apiece, were not enough to capture victory.
Despite allowing 15 runs total, the pitching staff did have a bright spot on Friday evening with the results of the bullpen, as Tony Dibrell, Brian Exley and Brock Turner combined for five scoreless innings.
The Owls will play at Auburn on Tuesday afternoon before returning home for a weekend series against Jacksonville State beginning on Friday.
