MCC Baseball loses series finale; faces Lamar in post-season

SCOTTSBLUFF – The McCook Community College baseball team dropped the final game of the three-game series with Western Nebraska Saturday with a 10-9 loss in the bottom of the ninth. MCC finishes in third place in the Region IX Empire League North Division and will travel to Lamar for the post-season tournament.

"We battled all day, it was a back and forth game all day and they got a hit late to end it," said MCC Coach Jon Olsen. "We did a good job of scrapping back in the top of the ninth to tie it back up after giving up a couple unearned runs in the bottom of the eighth."

Saturday's loss had no impact on the post-season seeding which was set let Friday when Northeastern Junior College clinched the second seed by winning twice against top-seeded Southeast Community College. With a win Saturday MCC could have tied NJC. The two teams split their season series 3-3 but the Plainsmen earned the second tie-breaker which is records against the top team in the division, SCC. MCC was 1-5 while the two NJC wins Friday clinched the second tie-breaker. They finished 2-4 against SCC.

MCC finishes the Region IX schedule in third place in the North Division Standings with a 17-17 Region IX record. The team will travel to Lamar for a best-of-three first-round Region IX post-season series. The Runnin' Lopes finished second in the South Division with a 14-17 record prior to a weekend series with Trinidad State in Lamar. Next weekend's opening-round post-season schedule is not set and is pending the completion of the weekend games.

Southeast Community College finishes in first in the North Division with a 29-5 record and will host Luna Community College (6-25) in the first round of the post season tournament. Northeastern Junior College finished second at 18-16 and will host Otero Junior College (10-21 before the final three-game series with Luna).

Trinidad State, (20-11 going into the final series of the year at Lamar) clinched the top seed in the South Division, will host Western Nebraska (16-18), fourth place finisher in the North Division.

MCC, 28-27 overall will play one final non-conference game Tuesday at Colby at 4 p.m.

In the series finale with Western Nebraska Saturday, MCC's offense for the day amounted to three three-run innings.

In the first inning, freshman Oliver Davies (Sydney, Australia) reached on a two-base error. Josh Maysonave (freshman, Austin, Texas) singled and Kade-Poteet-Herrera (Pueblo, Colo.) drove home the first run of the game with a single. Sophomore Persio Quezada, (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) singled home Maysonave and Poteet-Herrera scored on a sacrifice fly off the bat of sophomore Melwin Perez (San Sebastian, Puerto Rico) to put MCC up 3-0.

Freshman Mikey Acierno (Thornton, Colo.) started the game on the mound for MCC and went four innings allowing three runs on three hits, three walks and five strikeouts. Western Nebraska scored two in the first and tied the game 3-3 with two runs in the third.

Sophomore Daniel Bannon led off the MCC fifth with a single, and went to third on a Davies double. After a Maysonave walk, and an out, Quezada singled in Bannon, Davies scored on a sacrifice fly from sophomore Daegen Morocom (Winnipeg, Manitoba) and Maysonave scored on an error to put MCC up 6-3.

Reliever Lester (St. Charles, Ill.) pitched a scoreless fifth but ran into trouble in the sixth when the Cougars scored four runs to take a 7-6 lead. He allowed three earned runs on five hits, and three walks after 1.2 innings and was relieved by C.J. Allen (Salado, Texas) who pitched 1.1 innings, allowed one hit and struck out 1.

Western Nebraska took a 9-6 lead with a pair of unearned runs in the eighth inning off sophomore Jordan Muschalek (Odessa, Texas).

After a pair of walks to lead off the MCC ninth, Quezada's RBI double made it a 9-7 game. A passed ball allowed another run to score and a wild pitch allowed MCC to tie the game 9-9.

Western came up with the walk-off win with two outs in the ninth.

Quezada had three hits for MCC and three RBIs.

For all the up-to-date information on MCC baseball this season including, schedules, statistics, rosters and photos, please visit the official website of MCC Athletics at mccindians.com