IOWA CITY, Iowa – The Lindenwood baseball team (6-8, 0-0 OVC) came away with a gritty 4-3 win over Iowa (8-5, 0-0 Big Ten) at Duane Banks Field on Saturday afternoon. The victory stands as the Lindenwood program's first over an opponent belonging to a Power Four conference.
Aaron Jungers was the headliner for LU, throwing five shutout innings to end the game while allowing just two hits with seven strikeouts to pick up his second win of the season.
Offensively, Lindenwood was led by
Tyler Ellis, who posted his second multi-hit outing of the weekend with a 2-3 effort that included a double and run scored.
Kam Edwards also recorded multiple hits, going 2-4 in the nine hole.
How it Happened
Iowa took an early 3-0 lead in the game, as starting pitcher
Seth Benes surrendered his first runs of the season after tossing 23 consecutive shutout innings to begin the campaign. The first two came in the third frame with Joey Nerat tripling with runners on first and second and two outs to put the Hawkeyes ahead.
Iowa would tack on one more in the fourth with a Kooper Schulte RBI single that scored Gable Mitchell, who had reached with a base hit of his own before moving into scoring position with a stolen base.
Lindenwood responded with their first runs in the top of the fifth, beginning with a Tanner SimPson solo home run to right center to get the Lions on the scoreboard. Then, following a hit by pitch and bunt single,
Tyler Ellis scored from second on a fielder's choice to cut the deficit to one.
Aaron Jungers entered the game and sat down the Iowa side in order in the bottom of the fifth before Lindenwood scored two more runs in the sixth to pull ahead.
Will Geary got the inning started with a leadoff single followed by
Jake Radosevich drawing a base on balls to put two on with no outs.
Geary would score from second to tie the game on a throwing error by the Iowa first baseman on a
William Zareh fielder's choice, with Radosevich also taking an extra 90 feet to reach third. The Lions would then pull ahead on an
Ethan Cantareira sacrifice fly to center field.
That would be Lindenwood's final run of the game, but it proved to be all they needed as Jungers went the rest of the way without allowing any Hawkeyes to even reach scoring position, only giving up a pair of singles with zero walks through the game's final five innings to lead the Lions to a historic win.
Next Up
The rubber match between Lindenwood and Iowa is scheduled for Sunday at 1:00 p.m.
