JOLIET, Ill. --- Looking to continue its climb up the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference standings, the University of St. Francis baseball team saw its hopes of moving within one-half game of second place dashed when St. Ambrose University plated three runs in the top of the ninth inning to rally for a 6-5 victory Wednesday afternoon at DuPage Medical Group Field.
The come-from-behind victory enabled the Fighting Bees (19-18, 15-5 CCAC) to gain sole possession of the No.2 spot in the league standings, while pushing the Saints (17-13, 15-9) two back and keeping them in fourth place. St. Ambrose also moved to within one game of front-runner Judson University, while St. Francis fell three games behind the Eagles.
A one-out walk followed by back-to-back doubles started the rally with the latter double by Max Rumpf forcing the second tie (five-all) of the game. Mike Coughlin then delivered the eventual game-winning hit with a single back up the middle.
St. Ambrose opened the contest in similar fashion with three hits and a walk amongst its first five batters to build a 2-0 lead. St. Francis starter Colin Kelly (SR/Tinley Park, Ill.) settled down after that allowing only three more hits over the next four innings to finish off his afternoon.
The Saints used single runs in both the second and fourth innings to knot the score at two-all before Jake LaSota's (JR/Marengo, Ill.) two-run single up the middle in the sixth inning provided USF with its first lead of the contest at 4-2. For LaSota, it was his second and third runs batted in of the game. He also drove in St. Francis' first run on a groundout.
USF's second run came home on an error.
St. Ambrose got one of the sixth-inning runs back one half-inning later, but was looking for more. Reliever Ryan Daly (FR/Plainfield, Ill.), however, diffused the situation when he got a strikeout and a groundout to end the inning with three Fighting Bees left on the basepaths. For the game, St. Ambrose stranded 13 runners.
St. Francis added an insurance run in the eighth inning on second baseman Dolan Nicholson's (SR/Denton, Texas) RBI double only to find out one-half inning later that it would still leave the Saints one run short in the end. Sam Pileggi (FR/Plainfield, Ill.) (1-1) suffered the loss for the Saints.
USF was out-hit 12-6 on the day, but did take advantage of four walks, scoring three times. No Saint recorded more than one hit, but first baseman Joe McGuire (SR/Lockport, Ill.) did reach base three times (single, two walks) and scored all three times.
The Saints take a break from CCAC play on Thursday (April 22) when they travel to Fort Wayne, Ind. to face Indiana Institute of Technology in a doubleheader beginning at 1 pm Central Daylight Time.
