Stephens goes 4-for-5, but Baseball falls 10-3 at Murray

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MURRAY, Ky.– Junior third baseman Alex Stephens was 4-for-5 with a home run, but the Morehead State baseball team left 10 runners stranded and dropped the opening game of its final regular-season series at Murray State, 10-3, Thursday night at Reagan Field.
 
The Racers, who entered the week in seventh place in the Ohio Valley Conference standings, moved to 14-14 in the league and 26-28 overall. Morehead State, which needed just one win in the series to secure an OVC Tournament berth, fell to 30-24 overall and 16-12 in the conference.
 
After falling behind 2-0, Stephens launched a three-run homer to left field in the top of the third to give his team a 3-2 lead. But, starting pitcher Matt Anderson issued five walks, and the offense could not execute with runners in scoring position, leaving six on the base paths at either second or third base.
 
"We are best when we don't issue free passes and get timely hitting," said head coach Mike McGuire. "We didn't do either of those tonight. We could have probably had a 5-5 game or even been leading 6-5 going to the eighth, but we couldn't even get a ground ball to score a runner twice. Matt struggled with his command tonight."
 
The Racers broke open a 5-3 lead with five runs in the eighth for the final margin.
 
Sophomore second baseman Braxton Morris was 3-for-4, while freshman catcher Hunter Fain collected two hits.
 
Tyler Lawrence and Kipp Moore had two hits each for the home team, while Caleb Hicks connected on a two-run double.
 
Anderson struck out six to raise his season total to 124 but fell to 8-3. Racer starter Ryan Dills allowed 11 hits but fanned six in eight innings to improve to 6-3.
 
The teams will play game two of the series on Friday at 7 p.m. ET.