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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – Missouri State’s 2023 baseball season ended Friday evening with an 11-3 loss to Evansville at Bob Warn Field in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament semifinal.
The Bears (33-23) fell behind 5-0 after five innings thanks to a solid start by Evansville’s Tyler Denu, rallied with a three-run sixth, then yielded six runs in a mistake-filled eighth the put the game away for the Aces (36-23) and sent them to Saturday’s championship round.
Denu (4-4) faced the minimum through 10 batters and surrendered only one hit through five innings, a Mason Greer triple, to take a 5-0 lead into the sixth.
The Aces hit a leadoff homer in the second and plated four in the fifth after loading the bases with one out, the last on one of the Bears’ four errors on the night.
Missouri State loaded the bases with no out in the sixth to knock out Denu and scored three on a Nick Rodriguez ground out and two-run single by Greer to make it 5-3.
Things unraveled in the eighth as Evansville scored six runs – five unearned – on a combination of four singles, two walks, two errors and a wild pitch to make it an 11-3 game.
The Bears loaded the bases again in the ninth but came up empty, and collected 11 free passes (nine walks, two hit batters) in the game on the way to stranding nine runners. Greer had both of MSU’s hits, its fewest in a game since March 2, 2018.
End of season notes: The Bears’ 33 wins were their most in a season since 2018, while the 18 MVC victories tied with four other seasons for the program’s highest league win total since 2004…Missouri State hit 89 home runs, the sixth-best total in school history, and the Bears have launched 199 homers in the last two seasons…The pitching staff struck out 517 batters on the year, fourth-most in school history, while the rate of 9.28 Ks/9 innings set a school record…The staff tied a school record with 19 strikeouts in a March 10 game against SIUE…Spencer Nivens was MSU’s sixth MVC Player of the Year and ended the season with 36 extra-base hits, the most by Bear since 2017…Zack Stewart’s 61 RBI ranked second only to Ryan Howard (66 in 1999) for the most by a true freshman in school history…Stewart (32) and Taeg Gollert (30) ranked 3-4 among true freshmen at MSU in terms of extra-base hits, trailing only future Big Leaguers Jason Hart (36 in 1996) and Howard (33 in 1999)…Gollert’s 19 doubles placed him one sh of the MVC lead…Brandt Thompson tied a school record with 17 pitching starts…Trey Ziegenbein ends his career with a school-record 103 appearances…Ziegenbein’s 30 appearances in 2023 rank sixth on MSU’s single season, while Scott Youngbrandt’s 28 rank eighth…Head Coach Keith Guttin ended the season with 1,373 career victories, second among active coaches and tied for 12th all-time in the Division I ranks.
