Baseball opens season with two wins and two losses

The Golden Eagle baseball team split their first four games of the season with two wins and one loss against Illinois over the weekend, and a 12-1 loss to Lipscomb Tuesday afternoon.
The game against Lipscomb (4-1) was highlighted by a ten-run fifth inning for the Bisons.
“Big innings kill you,” head coach Matt Bragga said.  “It doesn’t matter if you’re playing the best team in the country, the worst team in the country or somebody in between, you have to make them earn their runs.  We didn’t do that in the fifth.”
In the inning, the Golden Eagles gave up three walks, a hit batsman and an error.  Lipscomb was able to send 14 batters to the plate.
“Beyond the fifth, Nick Price pitched well the first four innings,” Bragga said.  “Baugh (Garrett) kind of fell on hard luck.  He had a couple of ground ball base hits that rolled through, and as a coach, I can’t be upset with that.  Its just part of the game.”
Bragga said that the offense needed to do a better job of “working their plan” saying that the hitters needed to be more patient and work the counts more.
The Golden Eagles did take the series against Illinois (2-1) last weekend, with one of their two wins coming off of a walk-off home run from junior Brandon Thomasson.
Tech battled back for their two wins in the series after dropping the first one, 13-2.  The two wins were both one run wins for the Golden Eagles with a 6-5 win Saturday and a 7-6 win on Sunday.
“Last Friday’s game reminded me of Tuesday’s,” Bragga said.  “What our guys were able to do on Saturday and Sunday was understand that we need to throw more strikes, we need to play better defense, we need to have more patient at-bats.”
“I believe in our guys,” Bragga said.  “I believe with all my heart that we’ll rectify those issues that we’ve shown in two of our first four games.”
The Golden Eagles will look to bounce back in the win column as they open a three game series against Niagra University (0-4) Friday at the Averitt Baseball Complex at 3 pm.