KENOSHA, Wis. – The Carthage College Red Men dropped a pair of games on the Saturday before Easter at Augie Schmidt Field, as the baseball team fell, 9-3 and 7-2, to Wheaton College.
The pair of losses drops the Red Men to 13-13 on the season and a game below .500 in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin at 6-7, while the Thunder improve to 18-12 and 8-6 in the CCIW.
GM1: Wheaton 9, Carthage 3
The Red Men jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the first inning as a
Zach Wade single to left scored
Jared Knoespel and
Jordan Wiegold.
However the Red Men bats would fall silent on a day that the Thunder got to starting pitcher,
Kevin Tibor, handing the junior his first loss of the season. Now at 6-1 on the season, Wheaton touched up Tibor for five runs, three of which were earned, on nine hits one walk and three hit batters.
Carthage cut a 4-2 deficit to one in the seventh behind a solo blast by
Drew Korosic.
The Thunder responded however with a four-run eighth to take the first game, 9-3.
As a team the Red Men tallied just seven hits off Wheaton starter Daniel Bayer including two by
Jordan Wiegold to lead Carthage.
GM2: Wheaton 7, Carthage 2
In game two it was a strong pitching that doomed the Red Men by Wheaton's Michael McCraith, as the righty held the Red Men to just two runs on four hits over eight innings, while striking out nine in the win.
Zach Wade provided the Red Men's few bright spots in the loss, going 2-4 at the plate and driving in both runs with a solo homerun in the second and an RBI double down the left field line to score
Reed Hero.
Carthage's
Joe Nelson took the loss in game two, allowing seven runs, five earned, on nine hits to fall to 1-2 on the year.
The Red Men will return to action with a pair of midweek games starting with a road game at Aurora University on Tuesday, before returning to Augie Schmidt Field on Wednesday to face the University of Chicago. First pitches for both games are slated for 3:00 p.m.
"These non-conference games are going to be nice because we are going to have a chance to play a lot of people that may not always get time," said head coach Augie Schmidt looking ahead to next week. "Today, we ran into two pretty good pitchers for Wheaton, and along with giving one away against Elmhurst, it leads to a bad weekend. This wasn't a typical Carthage game for us but we will regroup and be fine. At some point you have to tip your hat to those two that threw for Wheaton today. They went 17 innings combined innings against a pretty good hitting team in us so a tip of the cap to them. We just need to refocus ourselves and go from here."
