The BYU baseball team fell in 11 innings to the Utah Valley University Wolverines on Tuesday night at Miller Park.
“I tip my hat to Utah Valley,” said BYU head coach Mike Littlewood. “They were down a couple runs in the late innings, away from home, and they found a way to get it done. They made the plays, they had key hits, they beat us tonight.”
The Cougars started off strong in the home half of the first inning. Hayden Nielsen hit a triple and later scored off a Colton Shaver single.
UVU took a 2-1 lead in the third inning off a one-out single from Greyson Bodgen that scored Trevor Howell.
The Cougars battled back to retake the lead in the bottom of the third off a RBI single from Nielsen, a sacrifice pop up from Eric Urry and an illegal balk from the UVU pitcher. At the end of the frame the Cougars found themselves leading 4-2.
Neither team scored until the seventh inning. UVU’s Both teams scored in the seventh inning after UVU’s Jordan Schlehubar hit a sacrifice RBI into deep left to drive in a run and BYU’s Keaton Kringlen batted in Nielsen for what would have been an RBI triple, but Kringlen was thrown out at third.
The Cougars were up 5-3 until the ninth inning, where the Wolverines tied things up. BYU was unable to score in the bottom of the ninth and the game went into extra innings, where UVU would score two runs in the top of the eleventh inning.
The Cougars couldn’t answer in the bottom half and fell 7-6.
“We really didn’t show up today,” said center fielder Brennon Lund. “We can definitely play better and those guys (UVU) played really well. I give them credit for that.”
Shaver said the Cougars may have lost focus coming into the game.
“It felt like we weren’t here ready to play,” Shaver said. “I felt like we kind of walked in here just thinking we were going to beat them. We took them for granted.”
The Cougars fall to 30-11 on the season with the loss and travel to Pepperdine this weekend for a three-game series against the Waves. The game can be listened to on BYU Radio Sirius XM 143 and can be viewed on BYUtv.
