The baseball programs at Shawnee State and Indiana-Southeast battled one another to two competitive baseball contests Saturday afternoon at the Koetter Sports Baseball Complex in New Albany, Ind., as the Bears battled back from an 8-3 setback in the series opener to claim a 4-1 victory in the second contest of the series in its first pair of River States Conference contests.

Game 2 -- Shawnee State 4, Indiana-Southeast 1

After dropping the series-opener by an 8-3 margin, Shawnee State rallied back with a strong performance in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader, taking control over the back half of the second affair in its 4-1 victory over Indiana-Southeast.

The Bears initially fell behind by a 1-0 margin after back-to-back singles by the Grenadiers allowed IU-Southeast to take the point after three innings of work.

However, Shawnee State made sure that IU-Southeast didn't take control from there.

In the top half of the fourth frame, Diego Mendoza shot a leadoff double down the left field line, and after a sacrifice bunt by Noah Sniadach allowed courtesy runner Eli Jones to move up 90 feet to third base, Zach Gaspar's sacrifice fly RBI brought in Jones to equalize the score at one after four innings of work.

In the sixth inning, the Bears took the lead for good as Tyler Lund's leadoff double down the line in left and a bunt single by Nolan Tressler allowed Mendoza to bring in Lund with a 6-4 fielder's choice RBI groundout. Then, after back-to-back base knocks from Sniadach and Gaspar, Hunter Warner's infield shot was mishandled in the middle infield, allowing Jones to score again to push Shawnee State's lead to a 3-1 margin. The Bears added the game's final run in the seventh inning as Ryan Scott scored on a wild pitch to set the final line.

Eric Oakes, who pitched five innings in relief of Shawnee State starter Trent Tice, picked up the victory as Oakes struck out five batters and walked only two. Oakes hit a batter and walked a batter in the seventh and final frame to bring the tying run up to the plate with one out in the bottom half of the seventh, but the veteran talent responded by striking out Colin Long and forcing Slater Schield into a lineout to end matters.

Defensively, Shawnee State pitched a clean sheet in the second affair en route to helping the winning cause greatly.

Game 1 -- Indiana-Southeast 8, Shawnee State 3

Shawnee State jumped out to a 2-0 lead in Game 1 after an inning of play as Diego Mendoza's one-out single and Noah Sniadach's double allowed Eric Oakes to bring in courtesy runner Eli Jones with a sacrifice fly, while Zach Gaspar brought in Sniadach on an RBI single to right.

Hunter Warner added in an RBI single in the seventh inning for the Bears, cutting the Indiana-Southeast lead to a 5-3 count after Ryan Scott poked a leadoff single to center field with Brock Kitchen sacrifice bunting to put Scott in scoring position, setting up the RBI base hit by Warner that brought SSU to within 5-3 after seven innings complete.

Additional

Tressler (3-for-8), Mendoza (2-for-8, double, RBI), Sniadach (3-for-5, two walks, sacrifice bunt, run scored) and Gaspar (2-for-6, sacrifice fly, two RBI) led the top of the order, while Scott (3-for-4, two runs scored) led the production toward the bottom of the order for Shawnee State (5-10, 1-1 RSC) between the two contests.

The Bears will take on Indiana-Southeast in a single nine-inning contest that begins Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m.

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