Central Michigan University
Bowling Green
Chippewas Manage Just 3 Hits In Home-Opening Loss
3/22/2016 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - The Central Michigan baseball team managed just three hits Tuesday in dropping a 4-0 non-conference game to Bowling Green in the Chippewas home opener at Theunissen Stadium.
The Chippewas (4-16) are scheduled to play at Michigan State (14-3) on Wednesday in a non-league game. They are slated to entertain Kent State (13-5) in a three-game series this weekend to open Mid-American Conference play.
"Anytime you've got your home opener and you get shut out you've got to be disappointed," CMU coach Steve Jaksa said.
Greg Basalyga hit a two-run homer to highlight a three-run third inning for Bowling Green (8-13), which collected nine hits.
The Falcons added a run in the fourth when Cody Callaway drew a bases-loaded walk.
The Chippewas got back-to-back singles from Daniel Robinson and Daniel Jipping to start the bottom of the fourth, but both were stranded when Bowling Green starter Brad Croy got a popup and two fly outs to end the threat.
"I thought we swung the bats really well early on and they scored those three runs and I don't know if we started pressing a little bit," Jaksa said. "That's kind of the way it appeared. We just could never got on track.
"You've got to keep a little bit of pressure on them there, wear their pitcher down a little bit and we weren't able to do that."
Croy allowed two hits, walked two and struck out one over four innings for the win. Tyler Anderson allowed one hit, struck out four and walked one in 3 1/3 innings of relief. Kody Brown worked the final 1 2/3 innings.
CMU managed just one hit after the fourth, a seventh-inning pinch-hit single by Jarrod Watkins.
Freshman left-hander Grant Wolfram (0-2) started and took the loss. He surrendered four runs on six hits, walked four and struck out two over 3 2/3 innings.
"He threw some really good pitches in the three-plus innings that he pitched," Jaksa said. "He'll learn from that. I thought overall he threw some really good pitches, he was aggressive.
"You look at the results and I'm sure he would have liked to do a little bit better, but at the same time I thought there was progress made in his performance today."
Brady Williams was solid in relief of Wolfram, allowing three hits over 4 1/3 innings. He struck out three and walked one. Connor Kelly worked the ninth.
"Brady did a great job," Jaksa said. "He threw really well for us when we were at Xavier (last weekend) too. We extended him a little bit today. He got up to almost 60 pitches.
"Of course there's some disappointment, some frustration because we didn't hit the ball. But from Brady's standpoint he did a really nice job for us."
The Chippewas played error-free defense for the fifth consecutive game.
"I think we've been playing some really good defense," Jaksa said. "We've got to put it all together between the offense and the pitching and we haven't been able to do that in enough situations yet.
"But I still believe we're going to get there. We've just got to keep working through it and good things will happen at the end. I do believe that."
