MU baseball comes out on top

By Lenny Goldman
April 15, 2008

Freshman shortstop Andrew Thigpen attempts to tag out Texas sophomore outfielder Russell Moldenhauer on Sunday afternoon at Taylor Stadium. Texas won the game 9-2 after losing the series’ first two games to Missouri.

This weekend fans expected to watch grind-it-out-style baseball between Missouri and Texas, and they witnessed three consecutive slugfests. The closest call was on Sunday when the Longhorns beat the Tigers by seven runs.

On a weekend where Taylor Stadium was supposed to be the home of history, junior pitcher Aaron Crow failed to extend his 42 and two-thirds innings-long scoreless streak further than one more out.

This was no ordinary weekend.

Missouri took two out of three games from the Longhorns and moved to 7-5 in the Big 12. The series kicked off in dramatic fashion when the Tigers won game one 31-12.

“I knew we were going to score a lot of runs the way the wind was blowing,” Crow said. “To score 31 was great. It was a lot of fun. This was something I’ve never seen before.”

Crow, who had only allowed four runs all season, gave up nine against the Longhorns and lost his scoreless innings streak.

“He was angry at himself,” coach Tim Jamieson said about Crow’s demeanor after the first inning. “Not so much for the streak breaking, but because it should have been a one-run inning and it turned out to be a five-run inning.”

The Tigers’ offense would not allow Crow to pick up his first loss of the season, providing enough support to improve his record to 8-0.

“We knew we could get it done and we knew Crow was going to go out there and give us all he’s got,” senior designated hitter Jacob Priday said. “He battled back and put up two zeros at the end of his outing. We knew he was going to do that. He’s been doing it all year for us, so we kind of stepped up and did our part.”

Priday did just about enough work to complete everyone’s part on Friday, going 5-for-5 with four homeruns and nine runs batted in.

“I saw the ball well tonight, hopefully I can keep seeing it well,” he said. “It looked pretty big tonight. You can’t really explain it. It’s just kind of one of those things where you’re in the zone.”

The momentum from Friday night’s slaughter continued into Saturday’s game where the Tigers won 13-2 behind the arm of sophomore Kyle Gibson.

Gibson pitched seven innings while giving up five hits and one run and striking out nine.

Typically, Gibson pitches on Sunday, but Jamieson decided to switch up the rotation. The extra day of rest did not benefit junior pitcher Ian Berger, as he lost game three 9-2 by giving up seven runs in five innings pitched.

“It was rough,” Berger said. “I left a lot of balls up and they hit them hard. I didn’t get a couple of calls I wanted so I had to throw a couple more pitches, and then I made mistakes and they hit them hard.”

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MU baseball comes out on top

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