BASEBALL

Senior Adrian Perez put the exclamation point on the #RV baseball team’s regular season when he sailed his first pitch over the right field fence for a two-run dinger in the tenth to lift his team to a 7-5 win over Indiana Wesleyan (21-28, 15-12) Tuesday night at TU’s Winterholter Field. The W sends HU (26-12) into postseason as the outright CL regular season champs with a league record of 20-7.

For Perez, it was his fourth homer of the year, the eighth of his two-year HU career. The blast broke the Foresters’ six-innings of silence. After plating four runs in the first and collecting another in the third, Huntington’s bats went quiet as they managed just three hits until the extra inning when Satchell Wilson led off with a single to set the stage for Perez.

The Foresters finished the evening with 13 base pokes, posting four in the first frame to jump out to a 4-0 lead. The inning saw Adam Roser and Wilson each pounded out an RBI-double to account for the first three runs after which Ian McCutcheon singled in another.

Wilson struck again in the third by driving in Andrew Natividad with a single into right for his third RBI of the game, his 18th of the year. HU’s 5-0 advantage was quickly whittled down to a single run compliments of Caleb Eder’s grand slam in the bottom of the frame. Another IWU long ball in the fourth, this time a solo shot at the bat of Steven Busby, made for a 5-5 deadlock that stood until Perez finally cracked the scoreboard with his mighty swing.

Wilson finished 4-for-5 at the plate with three RBI while Collin Landrum, Daniel Lichty and Natividad collected two hits apiece in the winning effort.

Four Foresters spent time on the mound with Austin Pritchard, who came in on relief in the ninth, eventually earning the W. The junior southpaw offered two innings of hitless, scoreless relief. The HU pitching staff gave up just four hits in the contest and handed out three free passes while fanning ten batters.

Frame’s crew swiped nine bags against the Wildcats to set a new program record for steals in a season. To date, the Foresters have stolen 104 bases. HU entered the night ranked fifth in the NAIA in stolen bases per game (2.568).

As the top seed in the Crossroads League tournament, Huntington will face 8th-seeded Grace on Friday at 4:00 p.m. in the opening round. All games will be held at Taylor University’s Winterholter Field.