Friday, May 10
Brookings, S.D.
3:00 p.m.
Purdue Fort Wayne
at
South Dakota State
Photo by: Lucas Carter
Baseball Hits the Road for South Dakota State Series
5/9/2013 11:23:00 AM | Baseball
Live Stats
FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The IPFW baseball team will travel to Brookings, S.D. to play the South Dakota State Jackrabbits in a four-game series this weekend beginning on Friday, May 10. The Mastodons will play single games on Friday and Sunday with a scheduled doubleheader on Saturday afternoon.
ABOUT IPFW
The Mastodons improved their overall record to 21-23 on Wednesday with a 4-1 victory over Butler in the regular season home finale. IPFW is now tied for sixth all-time in school history for most wins in a single-season.
IPFW ended the year with an 8-9 record at Mastodon Field and enter the weekend with 9-9 mark on the road. The Mastodons split a doubleheader with South Dakota State earlier this year with a 1-0 win in game one followed by an 11-14 loss in the nightcap.
The trio of Tyler Shepherd, Clay Hathaway, and Brandon Soat has impacted the IPFW lineup. Shepherd leads the team with a .318 batting average and 25 stolen bases. He has five doubles and a home run on the year to register 17 RBI's.
Hathaway is batting .310 on the year, but leads the team during Summit League action with a .344 batting average. The senior has eight doubles a team-high three triples and four home runs on the year.
Soat holds a .309 batting average with five doubles, two triples and one home run on the season. He has started in 14 of IPFW's 20 Summit League games and posted a .460 slugging percentage to go along with a .377 on-base percentage.
Defensively, the Mastodons post a team ERA of 4.08 to go along with a .960 fielding percentage. The weekend rotation will feature Jason Kalber, Chuck Weaver, Brandon Pease, and Steve Danielak. The bullpen has also been solid four different players have at least two saves on the year. Travis Reboulet, Connor Lawhead, and Kyle Sorensen each have three saves each and Connor McLaughlin earned his second save of the season with the win over Butler.
ABOUT SOUTH DAKOTA STATE
The Jackrabbits enter the weekend with a 25-17 overall record which includes a 10-6 mark in Summit League play. SDSU is just 4-3 at home this season, two of the four wins came against Summit League opponents.
Despite only starting in 16 games this season, Daniel Telford has greatly impacted the Jackrabbit lineup with six doubles, three triples and a team-high five home runs. He leads the team with 28 RBI's a slugging percentage of .877 and an on-base percentage of .532.
Paul Jacobson and Scott Splett are two everyday starters in the SDSU lineup that also bat over .300 for the Jackrabbits. Jacobson is batting .312 overall and .341 in league play with a team-high 11 doubles. Splett is right at .300 for the season, but jumps up to .373 in league competition.
South Dakota State has one of the best team ERA's in the Summit League at 3.31. Layne Somsen has one of the best ERA's on the team at 1.59 and Stephen Bougher has been a weapon for the Jackrabbits all year posting a record of 6-1 on the mound.
J.D. Moore closes out games for SDSU as he leads the team with 10 saves and an ERA of 0.92. Moore has made 18 appearances and has stuck out 23 batters in 19.2 innings of work.
APRIL 12 RECAP – IPFW vs. SDSU
Kendall Whitman hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the seventh inning to give IPFW a 1-0 win over South Dakota State in game one of the doubleheader, but the Jackrabbits recorded a 14-11 victory in game two behind two home runs from Daniel Telford.
The two games on Friday were polar opposites as game one featured eight hits and one run compared to 35 hits and 25 runs in the nightcap.
Jason Kalber kept the Jackrabbits off balance in the opener as the senior lefty threw all seven innings to get his first win of the season. Kalber only allowed three hits while striking out six. Five different players recorded a hit for the Mastodons, but it was Whitman pulling through with an RBI single sending Clay Hathaway to the dish for the game-winner.
Game two was full of excitement as each team scored two runs in the first inning. Telford hit his first home run of the game to right centerfield and the Mastodons came back to tie the game with RBI singles from Kristian Gayday and Brandon Soat.
SDSU broke the tie by adding a run in the third and it looked like the Jackrabbits were on their way to a win with four runs in the fourth, but IPFW battled back with three runs in the bottom of the inning pushing the score to 7-5.
Soat singled up the middle to start the inning and the freshman moved to third base after a double down the right field line from Whitman. Kevin Wirth picked up an RBI with a sacrifice fly to right and a double from Malcolm White allowed Whitman to cross home plate. The final run of the inning for IPFW came on another sacrifice fly as Tyler Shepherd took a ball to deep right field allowing Markus Kalber to tag up.
IPFW got within one run in the bottom of the fifth inning as Hathaway hit a two-RBI rocket into the wind that cleared the fence in left field. The 'Dons took advantage of a Jackrabbit error in the bottom of six to tie the game at 8-8.
The game breaker for IPFW came soon after as Telford hit his second home run of the game in the top of the eighth generating a four run inning for SDSU. The Jacks added two more in the ninth and the IPFW comeback fell short after Kalber's two-out base clearing standup double in the bottom of the inning.
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