May 8, 2008
Baseball Upsets No. 15 Mesa, Reaches RMAC Finals
Lopers 1 Win Away from Back-to-Back Tourney Titles
Kearney, Neb. – Senior Seth Svoboda and sophomore Ryan Seefus allowed just five hits, and senior Joe Nowaczyk went 3 for 5 with three RBI’s, to propel the Nebraska-Kearney baseball team to an 11-3 win over 15th-ranked Mesa State Friday afternoon in the final RMAC Tournament winner’s bracket game in Grand Junction, Colo.
Fourth-seeded UNK (32-25) advances to the championship game and will play again Saturday at 1:00 p.m. Central time against New Mexico Highlands or Mesa State. If the Lopers lose at one, they would play another championship game directly after.
Top-seeded Mesa State (42-16) came in riding an 11-game win streak but couldn’t muster a lot of offense against Svoboda (Kearney H.S.) or Seefus (Blair). During that long win streak, the Mavericks only had one victory where the scored fewer then eight runs.
Mean while, UNK has now won six straight games – the last five with double digit run totals -- and is 7-0 in RMAC Tournament games, dating back to last year’s second round.
The Lopers led from start to finish on Friday, seeing Nowaczyk (Gretna) score on a ground ball double play in the second to take a 1-0 lead. In the third, senior Chris Gillapsy (Henderson, Nev.) hit a one out single and came around to score when senior Joe Gonzales (2 for 3, two runs) hit a double down the right field line.
After senior Trey Howell (1 for 4, two runs) walked, Nowaczyk brought every one home with his team-leading 11th dinger of the year.
Mesa tallied one run in the third on a sacrifice fly and then cut the deficit to three when Curtis Englehart hit a two out homer in the fifth. Later in the fifth, the Mavs had the bases loaded but Seefus came on to relieve Svoboda and promptly got a ground out to end the inning.
Oddly, UNK scored another run on a double play ball in the seventh then had five hits to score five times in the ninth. Fifth-year senior Cole Archer, who missed all of last year with injury, had a two run single in the ninth while Howell (Antonito, Colo.) had an RBI base knock.
Seefus worked the final 4.1 innings to push his record to .500 (5-5) for the year. Since an April 15th win over his old team (NW Missouri State), Seefus is 4-0. Svoboda, in a starting role, worked around seven walks by allowing just two hits in 4.2 innings.
Mesa State, leaving 13 runners on base, saw Englehart and Matt Miller each have two hits. Pictured below are Nowaczyk-Svoboda-Seefus
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Contact:
Peter Yazvac
yazvacpa@unk.edu |