Game #7 • University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point 12, Carthage College 8

 

Momentum Swing Leaves Pointers Unbeaten In Tourney

GRAND CHUTE, Wis. – The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point remains just one of two unbeaten teams at the 2007 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship. The Pointers rallied to a 12-8 victory Saturday over Carthage College on soggy turf at Time Warner Cable Field at Fox Cities Stadium, snapping the Red Men’s school record 20-game win streak in the process.

“We’ve had a lot of games this year that we won that weren’t pretty,” admitted UW-Stevens Point head coach Pat Bloom. “We have had the habit of digging ourselves holes and making bad mistakes early. We’ve shown during our tourney run that we are a resilient group, and we stayed confident tonight and got it done.”

UWSP (34-15) will now wait to play on Sunday at 7 p.m. against the winner of Saturday’s late game between Chapman University (41-6) and Kean University (40-8). Meanwhile, the Red Men will lead off Sunday’s action at 12 noon in an elimination game against the State University of New York-Cortland (41-6).

The top of Carthage’s batting order tagged Pointers’ starting pitcher Garrett Nix for three earned runs in the first inning. Nix had faced just six Red Men hitters before being relieved by Brandon Hemstead, who eventually earned the victory on the mound.

“Jumping on opposing pitchers has been something we have been really good at this year,” said Carthage centerfielder Boe Baitinger, whose team was batting .352 entering the finals. “We were really focused early and hit the ball hard. I think we lost some of that focus as we got into their bullpen, and weren’t able to regain it after the momentum swung in their direction.”

UWSP got back to within one in the very next frame, as Justin Bushong’s two-out single bounced over the head of Carthage third baseman Tyler Yapp to plate a pair of runs. The Red Men extended their lead to 4-2 in the bottom half of the second and held it until Ryan Byrnes’ double to the right-center gap in the top of the fourth knotted the score. The Pointers then gained their first lead of the game, 5-4, on Joel Hojnacki’s two-out double down the left-field line two batters later.

The Pointers’ bats continued to give Hemstead a solid cushion by rattling off five more runs over the course of the next two innings. Brad Archambeau’s single up the middle, with the Carthage infield drawn in, scored Hojnacki to make the score 9-4.

“[Hemstead] came in and did a great job,” said Carthage head coach Augie Schmidt IV. He really shut us down for a while. We had been getting all the breaks lately, and you have to be lucky and get bounces when you win 20 in a row. You could feel the momentum shift as things started to go there way. I told my team after the game that the breaks had finally gone in another team’s direction.”

Carthage bounced back with three runs on four hits in the sixth inning and closed the gap further with another run in the bottom of the seventh to make it 10-8. But the Pointers struck again in the eighth inning with a pair of RBI singles, while closer Matt Mehne worked to pick up his sixth save of the season.

Saturday marked the fifth time the two Wisconsin teams have met in the programs’ histories. The last time was in the 1997 NCAA Division III Finals, when Bloom was a junior pitcher for the Red Men. Carthage won that second round contest 12-1. With today’s win, UWSP now owns a 4-1 record over the Red Men, and it’s the first time in the school’s history that the Pointers have started out 2-0 in their three finals appearances (1997, 2006, 2007).

“I told our guys that Carthage is a solid program that prides itself on getting to the World Series and that we would need our best game to beat them,” said Bloom. “We learned some lessons last year on what it takes to win here, and (we) are satisfied that we beat a good team and are 2-0.”

By Lucas LeNoble Edgewood College Sports Information Director