May 22, 2008
Box Score
Niles, Ill.- The UIC baseball team scored five times with two outs in the seventh to rally from a three-run deficit and defeat Valparaiso, 8-5, in the 2008 Horizon League Baseball Championship presented by U.S. Army at a chilly Eastwood Field on Thursday night.
The Flames (32-19) advance to meet Milwaukee in the next round of the tournament on Friday at 6 p.m. Central.
Starter Mike Kool gave a gutsy seven-plus inning, 128-pitch performance in which he allowed just two earned runs.
Jake Carr's sacrifice fly in the third put the Flames ahead first, but Valparaiso (20-34) evened the score in the next half-inning and eventually took a three-run lead in the sixth during a frame plagued by a pair of UIC fielding errors.
But as has been the case all season long, the resilient Flames stormed back while doing all of their damage with two outs.
Jason Ganek's two-out RBI single in the bottom of the sixth cut UIC's disadvantage down to two, and after reliever Austen Siwiec retired the first two hitters of the seventh, the Flames' offense exploded without hitting the ball out of the infield.
Brett Schaefer and Kevin Coddington walked, and Rafael Garcia hit an infield single off of newly-inserted reliever Steve Godawa to load the bases. Godawa's wild pitch allowed the runners to move up 90 feet and get the Flames within a run. Brandon Harwell was plunked by a pitch to re-load the bags, and Andy Leonard drew a free pass that drove in the tying run.
Another infield single, this time off the bat of Ganek, drove in the go-ahead run, and Steve McGuiggan's bunt single down the third base line was accompanied by a subsequent throwing error by Andrew Quinnette to account for two more tallies during the play.
The Crusaders scored a run in the eighth, but UIC returned the favor in the bottom part of the inning on Harwell's sacrifice fly.
Don Phillis came on to record the final five outs and earn his third save of the season.
UIC's win marked the first victory by the higher-seeded team in this year's tournament.
