Five-Run Tenth Hands Kent State 7-4 Victory

Friday, April 14

DeKalb, IL

2:00 PM

Kent State University

18-11, 6-1

Northern Illinois University

9-24, 5-5

Kent State

Northern Illinois

Photo by: Nate Manley

Five-Run Tenth Hands Kent State 7-4 Victory

4/14/2017 8:15:00 PM | Baseball

Box Score

DEKALB, Ill. – Kent State's (18-11, 6-1) five-run 10^th inning handed them the 7-4 victory at Northern Illinois (9-24, 5-5) on Friday as they battled for the win.

"It's a great win for us," said Head Coach Jeff Duncan. "Back and forth, we kept applying pressure and at the end of the day got the 'W'. We need to build off of this and play better tomorrow. We need to play better baseball. Eli Kraus threw a great game today and stepped up big for us. We need to play better defense behind him and we will. It was good to see Robert Zeigler throw the ball like he did today as well."

With five errors in the game, the Flashes' bats came up with a big inning as the game went in to extra innings. Not one of the Huskies' four runs was earned.

Northern Illinois was able to take an early 1-0 lead as they scored on two singles and two errors in the 1^st inning. Kent State answered with a two-run 4^th. Tim DalPorto singled and scored on a homerun by Dylan Rosa in the next at-bat.

The Huskies were able to tie the game in the 8^th on a single, error and another base hit. A 2-2 tie would force the game into extra innings.

A big 10^th frame would secure the win for the Golden Flashes. It would start with a walk by Dom Iero and intentional walk to Rosa. Reilly Hawkins then reached on a fielder's choice while an error allowed Iero to come home for the go-ahead run. Another error during the next at-bat allowed Sam Hurt to reach and Rosa to score. John Matthews then hit a sacrifice fly before Luke Burch belted a two-run double to make it a 7-2 game.

The Huskies would able to score two unearned runs in the bottom of the 10^th, but they would get no closer as Zeigler entered the game to get the final out and the save with bases left loaded.

Kraus set the tone with an impressive start, letting in no earned runs in 7.2 innings with six hits, one walk and four strikeouts. Zach Spangler followed with one shutout inning with two hits, one walk and one strikeout. Patrick Dayton earned the win as he threw 1.0 inning.

Burch went 3-for-6 with two RBi while DalPorto and Hawkins both contributed with two runs each.

The teams will play the second game of the series on Saturday at 2 p.m. EST.