The baseball program at Shawnee State exploded for nine runs on 15 hits Friday evening in its series opener against West Virginia Tech, as six players, including Nolan Tressler, Noah Sniadach, Eric Oakes, Zach Gaspar, Michael De Jesus and Hunter Warner all combined for the 15 base hits with all six players enjoying multi-hit outings.

Oakes' first-inning homer, a three-run blast to start the scoring, and home runs in back-to-back at-bats in the seventh and eighth innings to cap it led the Bears to a 9-2 victory over the Golden Bears, getting Shawnee State back on the right side of the win column Friday evening at Branch Rickey Park in Portsmouth.

Shawnee State trailed 2-0 after the opening half inning of play after an infield error, a wild pitch and back-to-back singles by Noah Lukas and Francisco Calderon, but the Bears countered quickly as a hit batter and a single by Noah Sniadach opened the door for Eric Oakes to unload the bases as the senior third baseman blasted a towering three-run drive over the left field fence to give SSU a 3-2 advantage.

Two batters later, Michael De Jesus added in a homer of his own. The 6-4 outfielder, who has swung the bat in impressive form for much of the year when his number has been called upon, launched a ball that bounced off of the glove of West Virginia Tech right fielder Logan Stump and hopped over the right field fence for a solo home run that pushed the Bears' advantage to a 4-2 margin after an inning of work.

After back-to-back doubles by De Jesus and Hunter Warner resulted in De Jesus scoring from second to push the advantage to a 5-2 count after the third inning of action, the effective pitching of Shawnee State's Ethan Ison and Carson Wireman kept the Bears in control. Ison walked four batters, but allowed just one hit following the opening inning of action and struck out three in his six innings of work while Wireman threw three scoreless innings of two-hit baseball in relief, striking out a pair of West Virginia Tech batters to boot.

With the lead in command thanks to the work of Ison, Wireman, and a defense that played a clean sheet over the final eight frames of action, Shawnee State ran away with the contest thanks to Gaspar. First, the junior cranked a leadoff solo home run to dead center in the bottom half of the seventh inning, pushing the Bears' advantage to a 6-2 margin. Then, after a double by Sniadach and a single by Oakes, Gaspar returned to the dish in the bottom of the eighth frame and crushed a three-run homer to right to set the final margin.

Additional

Gaspar (2-for-5, two home runs, four RBI, two runs scored), De Jesus (3-for-3, walk, two doubles, solo home run, RBI, two runs scored), Oakes (2-for-5, home run, three RBI, two runs scored), Sniadach (3-for-4, walk, double, two runs scored), Tressler (3-for-5, double) and Warner (2-for-3, double, RBI) accounted for all 15 hits in the contest.

Shawnee State (11-15, 6-4 River States Conference) will look to claim the series and obtain the series sweep Saturday afternoon with a pair of RSC contests against the Golden Bears (15-12, 4-6 River States Conference). The RSC doubleheader begins at 12 p.m.

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