COLUMBUS, Ga. – UWF baseball (2-4) piled up a season-high 12 hits but could not overcome an early 7-1 deficit at Burger King Stadium Tuesday, falling to the host Columbus State Cougars 8-6. Nick Kerkmann equaled his UWF career-high with four hits. He also added 2 RBIs. The Argos stranded 10 baserunners as a furious comeback effort fell just short.
"Give Columbus State credit. They've got a good ball club. They can swing the bats," said UWF head coach Mike Jeffcoat. "I thought after those first few innings, we started pitching a lot better. But we got down too much early."
Whitt Davis, Matthew Estrada, Dylan Mills-Derouen and Chase Evans combined to throw the first four innings for the Argos. The four hurlers surrendered all seven runs (seven earned) on four hits, five walks and a hit-by-pitch. Jared Gonzalez, Hunter Lucas and Alex Knight combined to pitch the final five innings, surrendering one unearned run, two hits, one walk and one hit-by-pitch.
"We didn't get good starting pitching. The first two, three guys we used didn't pitch well. They gave up a lot of free passes and spotted them those seven runs early, and then the rest of the bullpen we brought in did a good job," said Jeffcoat. "The plan was to use several pitchers tonight but certainly wasn't expecting only getting an inning out of the starter and having to make three or four changes there in the first couple of innings."
A Frank Wager home run in the first gave the Cougars (3-1) they would never relinquish. The home team built the lead to 4-0 before the second home run of the season by Nic Strasser, a solo shot off Cougar starter T.J. Clark in the third, got the Argos on the board.
Trailing 7-1 in the fifth, the Argos began a rally that got them back in the game. Robert Lopez took Clark for an RBI double that scored Strasser in the fifth. UWF then tagged the CSU bullpen for three runs on an RBI double by Brandon Harmon and a two-RBI single by Kerkmann in the sixth.
CSU got to Gonzalez for a run in the bottom of the sixth to take the lead back to three. Matthew Jones led the top of the seventh off with a double and later scored on a wild pitch to trim the deficit to two, but the Argos could close the gap no further. In the eighth, the team got a leadoff double from Mike Branche but could not bring him home.
"I saw some bright spots offensively," said Jeffcoat. "We're still leaving some runners in scoring position. We could have taken some opportunities early on to kind of close the gap. But they did fight back. We had several hits. As you see, we had a lot more hits than runs scored and had opportunities to get more runs on the board. Just didn't execute when we needed to."
The Argos left ten baserunners vs. six for Columbus State. Branche joined Kerkmann as the two Argos with multi-hit evenings. He came off the bench to go 2-for-2 with a run scored.
Whitt Davis (0-1) suffered the loss after surrendering two runs (two earned), two walks and a home run in the first. Clark (1-1) picked up the win by going five innings, scattering seven hits and two runs and issuing four walks. He struck out four. Drew Reeves pitched a scoreless ninth to pick up his first save.
Kerkmann finished 4-for-5. His four hits matched a career-high set in his first game for the Argos Feb. 7, 2015, when he piled up four hits vs. Albany State.
UWF Baseball will host the Argo Invitational beginning Friday, Feb. 16. The day will open with a 2:00 p.m. contest between Spring Hill and Palm Beach Atlantic. The Argos will take on No. 5 Tampa at 6:00 p.m.
Saturday will feature a 1:00 p.m. game between Tampa and Spring Hill. The Argos will battle Palm Beach Atlantic at 5:00 p.m. The Invitational will wrap Sunday with Palm Beach Atlantic and Tampa tangling at 11:00 a.m. UWF will take on Spring Hill at 3:00 p.m.
"The message [going into the weekend] is to go out and compete, lay it on the line and compete and let's see what happens," said Jeffcoat. "We haven't seen that as a whole yet as a team. Seeing a lot more guys starting to do that, but we've got to get everybody doing it."
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