Millington, TN – Indian Hills Baseball split a pair of games on the final day of the 2023 Babe Howard JUCO Classic on Saturday. The Warriors dropped the opener 13-7 to Lincoln Trail College (IL) before closing out the weekend with a 4-1 win over Carl Albert State College (OK).
The Warriors move to 5-3 on the year after back-to-back weekend trips to Millington, TN, home of the USA Baseball Complex where the Warriors competed.
After going 2-0 on Friday night on the opening day of the Babe Howard JUCO Classic, the Warriors saw a first inning lead disappear against Lincoln Trail. Sophomore Daniel Figueroa (Toa Alta, Puerto Rico/Leadership Christian Academy) led off the game with a single and later scored for the 1-0 lead, but the Trailblazers responded with eight runs in the bottom half of the frame to pull away.
Dylan Sales (Rockton, IL/Hononegah) and Miguel Salazar (Sentaines, Venezuela/San Luis) added run-scoring singles in the third only to see Lincoln Trail respond with three runs in the third. Raul Torres (Caguas, PR/Leadership Christian Academy) provided an RBI single to score Sayles in the fourth, but the Warrior offense stalled over the next two frames as Lincoln Trail led 13-4.
Indian Hills put a dent into the deficit in the final inning as Merrick Mathews (Centerville, IA/Centerville) drove in Figueroa with a double to center before sophomore Sergio Chavez (Laredo, TX/John B. Alexander) followed up with two-run home run to round out the scoring.
Figueroa, Mathews, and Sayles each tallied two hits in the loss. Freshman Andrei Gordeev (Balashika, Russia/Global Vision Christian) record his third consecutive scoreless appearance to open up the year for the Warriors. After 1.1 innings of work on Saturday, Gordeev has allowed just one base hit in 5.1 innings of relief this year.
The Warrior pitching staff so a dominant performance from freshman Jason Schaaf (Las Vegas, NV/Palo Verde) in the nightcap against Carl Albert State to salvage the split. In his first start of the year, Schaaf worked six innings, scattering five hits with just one earned run while striking out eight batters. Freshman Lou Levy (Highlands Ranch, CO/Mountain Vista) worked a scoreless seventh for his first save of the year.
The Indian Hills offense used a single run in each of the first two innings to take an early lead. Mathews drove in Figueroa in the first before Ciro Benavides (Laredo, TX/Alexander) scored on an error in the second.
After Carl Albert cut the deficit in half with a run in the third, Indian Hills answered with two runs in the fifth. Figueroa took advantage of a wild pitch to score from third for a 3-1 lead while Mathews delivered a sacrifice fly to score Sayles.
Carl Albert saw just one baserunner reach over the final three frames as Schaaf earned his first-career victory for the Warriors.
"We didn't get ourselves a chance to be successful in the opening game," stated head coach Matthew Torrez. "We hurt ourselves with too many free passes and couldn't recover from that. Our hitters did a pretty good job putting some runs up to make it close, we just couldn't hold them at bat to make it tight.
"Game two was well pitched and well executed offensively," Torrez added. "We made a couple of big pitches in tight situations and executed offensively a couple more times than they did in those big moments. We just need to find some consistency game-in and game-out on the mound."
Figeroa produced another multi-hit game for the Warriors, his fifth of the year, while adding two more stolen bases. The sophomore is hitting .519 (14-27) with six stolen bases this season.
Indian Hills returns to action this weekend for a four-game series at No. 17 Cowley College. The two sides will play a single game on Friday at 1:00 PM followed by a doubleheader on Saturday and a single game on Sunday.