SPRINGFIELD – Visiting Evansville scored five runs in the ninth inning Sunday afternoon to come away with a 16-11 victory over Missouri State at Hammons Field.
The Bears (23-19, 13-5 Missouri Valley Conference) still walked away with the series win and remained a game ahead of Murray State in the league standings with nine to play. Evansville moved to 8-10 in league games and 14-28 overall.
Missouri State scored four in the eighth inning for an 11-11 tie, with Nick Rodriguez swatting a two-run homer (14th) and Max Knight tying it with a two-run single. With two hits on the day, Rodriguez tied Kevin Medrano for the second-longest hitting streak in school history at 29 games, one shy of Brayden Drake’s record.
The Bears fell behind 3-0 before Zack Stewart connected on his first of two homers to make it 3-2 after two innings. Stewart and Curry Sutherland hit back-to-back bombs in the fourth for a 5-5 tie, with Stewart’s 42nd career homer tying Jeremy Eierman and Brian Mahaffey for eighth place on the school’s career list.
MoState led 7-5 after Caden Bogenpohl’s RBI single and a Jake McCutcheon sac fly in the sixth, but Evansville fired right back with four in the seventh and two in the eighth to lead 11-7.
The Bears tied it again in the eighth, only to watch the Purple Aces plate five two-out runs in the top of the ninth.
Sutherland had three hits, and Max Knight and Stewart each had three RBIs. Owen Slater matched career highs in innings (4.1) and strikeouts (5) while allowing one earned run out of the bullpen, which saw its collective 19.1-inning scoreless streak come to an end.
The Bears host fifth-ranked Arkansas on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in a rematch of a game Missouri State won 14-13 in Fayetteville on March 25.
