BELOIT, Wisconsin – The Ripon baseball program dropped the series finale at Beloit on Sunday afternoon, falling to the Buccaneers 6-2 at The Ballpark at Strong Stadium.
Scoreless until the third, Beloit (16-10, 5-4 MWC) struck first in the bottom of the inning with a sacrifice fly. Ripon (10-14, 5-4 MWC) loaded the bases in the fourth, but a flyout ended the inning. Then, the Bucs doubled their advantage in the bottom half with an RBI single.
Ripon placed two runners in scoring position in the fifth, but again was unable to capitalize as a popup ended the threat. Then, another Beloit RBI single padded the advantage. The lead grew to 5-0 in the sixth on a two-run homer after Ripon left the bases loaded in its portion of the inning.
The Red Hawks finally got on the board in the seventh. With runners on second and third,
Chase Hanselman scored on a Beloit error. The next at-bat,
Alex Pankratz drove home
Jason Clark with a sacrifice fly as the deficit was shaved to 5-2.
Beloit scored on a wild pitch in the seventh, taking a 6-2 lead. Ripon put runners on the corners in the eighth and another runner in scoring position in the ninth, but was unable to score and dropped the series finale.
Four different Red Hawks had multi-hit games:
Owen Gerhardt (2x4), Hanselman (2x5, run), Clark (2x4, walk, run) and
David Kleier (2x3, walk).
Rex Bayer got the start on the mound and took the loss. He went 5.2 innings, allowing nine hits and four earned runs.
NEXT UP: Ripon hosts UW-Stevens Point at 3 p.m. on Wednesday (April 16).
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