WYOMING, Mich. – The No. 18-ranked Indiana Tech baseball team closed out its regular season Thursday afternoon with a 12-1 victory over Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference (WHAC) rival Aquinas in seven innings at Kimble Stadium.
Charlie Sipe continued his torrid power streak as he led off the game with a solo home run to left center to give the Warriors a 1-0 lead. The Warriors leadoff man now has driven one over the outfield fence in four straight games and now leads the team with 13 homers overall.
Matt Bandor would quadruple Tech's lead to 4-0 five batters later in the bottom of the first as he smashed his ninth homer of the season to left field on a 1-1 count, given starter
Nick Noe plenty of cushion before throwing a pitch. The Ligionier, Indiana native would improve to 3-0 on the season as he allowed just one earned run on four hits in five innings of work while the Saints managed to get just three base runners in scoring position of the senior.
Aquinas would get on the board in the second to cut the deficit to 4-1, but the Orange and Black would answer back with four more runs in the fourth to extend the lead to 8-1. Following a leadoff single from Sipe,
Glen McClain would double down the left field line to make it 5-0 while
Keith Tatum and
Tighe Koehring would follow that up with two-baggers of their own to make it 7-0.
Noe would finish his outing strong with a pair of 1-2-3 innings before turning it over to the bullpen with a 9-1 lead. A Saints error would allow three more runs to score in the top of the seventh while
Zach Reid closed the door on the hosts in the bottom of the inning as he got out of a bases-loaded jam to give the Warriors their seventh-straight victory.
Bandor finished the afternoon with a team-high four RBI's while going a perfect 5-5 at the plate. McClain and Koehring would drive in two runs each while Sipe was 3-3 at the dish and scored twice.
Tech (41-10, 25-6 WHAC) now turns its attention to the WHAC Tournament, scheduled to take place Sunday, May 7-Tuesday, May 9 at the University of Northwestern Ohio and Lourdes University. The Warriors currently sit in third in the WHAC and would take on fourth-seeded Concordia at Mercy Field in Toledo, Ohio at 6 p.m. on Sunday if everything holds as it is now. The team could also move up to second place in the conference standings if Concordia defeats Davenport in their final regular season game, which was postponed today due to rain in Ann Arbor.
