Allendale, Mich. – Saginaw Valley State University baseball knew they were playing Grand Valley State University in the first game of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) tournament, but they did not know who was going to be the home team. SVSU (27-22, 17-13) claimed the third seed in the standings giving them the home team in with an 8-5 win over GVSU (28-19, 15-15) Sunday afternoon to end the regular season.
Multi-hit days by Jaccar Watkins who finished 2-for-2 with three walks and Connor McClennen who went 3-for-4 with two RBI lifted the Cardinal offense as starter Steven Hecht (W, 2-5) earned the quality start allowing three runs, one earned, through six innings of work.
Saginaw Valley got on the board first with a sacrifice fly by Colin Cornwell scoring Watkins in the first. Cornwell would be responsible for four of the scoring plays in the game, two of them being sacrifice fly's and the other two being errors.
The Lakers tied it up with a run of their own in the bottom of the first, but the Cardinal offense got back in the saddle. Two runs in the second off a two-RBI single to left by McClennen that scored Brandon Scheurer and Ethan Dufresne giving SVSU a two-run lead, and then an error off the bat of Cornwell in the third allowed Watkins to score to extend the lead. All four runs slated against Laker starter Mike Morawski (L, 3-1) who went two innings of work with three hits and two walks.
Grand Valley got two runs back in the fourth off an error that cut the lead to one. Those were the last runs against Hecht and both unearned as he held the lead until his departure in the seventh. Saginaw Valley doubled their lead to 5-3 with the second Cornwell sacrifice fly in the fifth before the big blow in the sixth. Cornwell stepped up with the bases loaded and two outs. On the fourth pitch of the at-bat, Cornwell flew a ball out to shallow center field that bounced out of the sliding fielder's glove and landed in the grass. All three runners crossed home making it 8-3 SVSU.
Nick Bastian took over in the seventh for Hecht and pitched a 1-2-3 inning. Nolan Knauf faced six batters in the eighth allowing two hits but striking out three to keep the five-run lead. In the ninth, Brandon Scheurer moved from third base to the mound. A one out single scored on a two-run home run to make it 8-5, but Scheurer got the next batter to fly out to end the game.
UP NEXT
SVSU ends the season five games over 500 and their best conference finish since 2007. Not including the 2020 shortened season, this is the first winning season since 2011. The post season begins Thursday with the GLIAC Tournament. All games are hosted at Jackson Field, the home of the Lansing Lugnuts, in Lansing, Michigan. Saginaw Valley will be the home team as they play Grand Valley on Thursday at 7:00 p.m.