Golden Bears to face Shawnee State in RSC first round
Apr. 29—WVU Tech will kick off the River States Conference Tournament bright and early.
The Golden Bears earned the No. 6 seed and will take on No. 3 Shawnee State Thursday at 9 a.m. in the first game of the tournament. The eight-team event will be played at VA Memorial Stadium in Chillicothe, Ohio.
The tournament will be divided into two four-team pods. The winner of each pod will receive an automatic bid to the NAIA Tournament, which will start May 13-16 on campus sites.
Point Park, which defeated Indiana-Southeast in the play-in round to clinch the regular season championship, is the No. 1 overall seed. The Pioneers will take on No. 8 Ohio Christian at 7:30 p.m.
No. 2 IU-Southeast faces No. 7 Rio Grande at 12:30 p.m. in the same pod as WVU Tech. Joining Point Park and Ohio Christian in the other pod are No. 4 Indiana-Kokomo and No. 5 Oakland City (4 p.m.).
The tournament will be double-elimination until the championship matchup is set. That will be a single-elimination game that will be played Sunday at a time to be determined.
Tech (27-20) advanced by sweeping its play-in series with IUP-Columbus with a 14-4, eight-inning victory Saturday at Linda K. Epling Stadium.
Hunter Fansler homered in his first at-bat as part of a four-hit day for the Golden Bears, finishing a double shy of hitting for the cycle. His home run was a solo shot to lead off the bottom of the first inning. In the fourth, he tripled to drive home two runs and came home after an error. He added an RBI single in the fifth to put Tech ahead 9-4.
Tech starter Robert Kelley, the NAIA leader in strikeouts going in, overcame a rocky first inning. The Crimson Pride (10-42) had three of their five hits in the inning, capped by Jared Ross' three-run homer to give his team a 3-0 lead.
The Tech offense came to Kelley's aid, Fansler's homer the first of three runs to tie it. The Golden Bears then scored three runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings and led 12-4.
In the eighth inning, Logan Spurlock doubled and scored on an RBI double by Francesco Calderon to end the game early via the mercy rule.
Kelley cruised after the first inning. He worked six innings overall and struck out seven and walked three. The Pride's fourth run was unearned.
Braedan Pakkala threw two scoreless innings in relief.
