Baseball looks to continue success on the road

Colton Molesky
Staff Writer

The Minnesota State Mavericks have continued to win, moving their streak to 10 games with a pair of victories over the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs.

At 20-7, the Mavericks continue to make a case for the most potent offense in the conference, grabbing a 15-1 scoring differential.

In the opening 3-1 win for MSU, senior pitcher, Quinn Ahern, was the story for the purple and gold, ruling the mound through seven innings while allowing three hits. His four strikeouts and 1.29 era smothered the Bulldogs and handed the Mavericks a 3-0 lead after three innings, allowing MSU to shift into cruise control early.

At the plate, it was a sheer miracle the Mavericks only posted three runs. The Mavs swung for 10 hits, led by sophomore infielder, Ty Buck, who followed up a great finish to the Concordia series with a three-hit outing to the Bulldogs. Senior catcher, Noah Bluth, and sophomore infielder, Teddy Petersen, also looked good at the plate with two hits apiece, while both Peterson and Buck also recorded RBI.

Game two was far more lopsided, with the Mavericks laying it on thick offensively in a 12-0 win that featured 11 hits. Petersen showed up in a big way, with both his hits going for doubles and earning a team-leading five RBI in the second game. MSU saw plenty of plate success on the day, with eight batters grabbing hits and seven recording runs.

While the offense made it easy, going up 4-0 after three innings and posting six runs in the fourth, the defense did a great job pushing the game from awkward to embarrassing for the Bulldogs.

MSU’s pitcher, Trevor Divinski, was stingy on the mound through six innings, letting up two hits and tossing a pair of strikeouts to secure his third win of the season.

The Mavericks remain on the road this week, headed to South Dakota for a two-game stint against the Sioux Falls Cougars. An 8-18 Cougars squad seems like an easy task for the Mavericks, who have won 10 straight and boast a stunning 81-20 scoring differential during the run.

Following a disappointing 0-10 start to the season, the Cougars have been a different team against NSIC opponents. They are 8-8 against the conference, holding opponents to one or fewer runs in six of their eight wins. On offense, two of the three double-digit performances have come over the last 11 games.

The goal for the Cougars will most likely be attempting to hold in check a red-hot MSU offense, faring far better in low scoring affairs and taking much less of a gamble against the MSU mound than their bats.

The Mavericks have presented very few weaknesses this season, but in a choice of two dangers, the pitching staff may be the game that keeps the Cougars within arm’s length. Even in a strategy that keeps the game within a few runs, MSU is the heavy favorite. Minnesota State is fresh off slapping the Bulldogs without needing their two of their premier pitchers in Aaron Rozek and Dalton Roach. The problem for Sioux Falls is the deep Mavericks team can play either way and is far too deep to trip up.