Pleasant Ridge alumni Devin Hupp and Josh Barnes combined to go 3-for-6 with three RBIs, two doubles, and a run scored, Rodney Spillman hit a home run, and Evan Faulkner gave up just one earned run on three hits in the first four innings on Thursday afternoon for the Saint Mary baseball team against Morningside College, but things fell apart for the Spires in the fifth inning in an 18-5 loss.
USM (now 0-3 this season) led 3-2 after four, but the Mustangs (5-8) exploded for seven runs in the fifth — keyed by a two-run homer from preseason NAIA All-American Jared Noteboom — and ran away with the non-conference game. Noteboom finished the game 4-for-4 with three runs and five RBIs, and Kelly Kotlik added a grand slam in the seventh to put the seven-inning run-spread rule in effect.
USM head coach Rob Miller said he was encouraged by his team’s start, but they’re still struggling since they haven’t been outside as much as their opponents.
“We ran into a couple innings where we couldn’t stop them, and it just snowballed from there,” Miller said. “I’ll tell you what about Morningside ... if you’re not on top of the pitching game, they’re going to hit the baseball.”
USM had the lead after a two-run double by Hupp and a sacrifice fly by Barnes, but Faulkner couldn’t hold onto his lead after pitching so well early. He still finished with only one walk in 4 1-3 innings, but Morningside finally got to him with five hits among the first six batters of the fifth.
“(He) did a great job for us, just got a little tired in the (fifth) and the ball started to stay up...” Miller said. “What Evan was doing (in the first four innings) was mixing it up and keeping the ball down. He was making them look bad.”
USM struggled defensively, committing five errors, but they made some strides offensively from their previous two games. Four of their six hits went for extra bases on Thursday, with Luis Ramos adding a triple.
“Offensively, we didn’t do a horribly bad job,” Miller said. “We’ve just got to be on the field, put them in situations, and do a better job. Our defense is poor right now. I can’t explain that because we take pride in our defense. ... We’ve made more errors right now than we probably made in the first month of our season last year. ... We’ll be better, we’ve just got get out, get aired out and do some things.”
