Thanks to a late offensive spurt, the Boll Weevils moved within a win of their first-ever Super Regional.
The University of Arkansas at Monticello baseball team scored 5 runs in the seventh inning to erase a 4-0 deficit, building enough momentum for a 7-4 win over tournament host and No. 2-seed Missouri Southern State University on Friday in an NCAA Division II Central Regional tournament in Joplin, Mo.
UAM, the No. 6 seed in the Central division, drew a rematch with Missouri Southern on Saturday evening in the championship round. (An update is available at pbcommercial.com.)
Harding University eliminated No. 3-seed Arkansas Tech University 3-2 on Friday, then lost to Missouri Southern 10-7 earlier Saturday.
UAM (34-22), which totaled 12 hits, turned around its game Friday with 2 singles, a double and a triple in the seventh. Roc Hawthorne sparked the rally with an RBI single, Camden Tanner doubled for 2 more runs, Kirk Woolf drove in the tying run on a single and Chase Cripps powered a triple for the go-ahead score.
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Woolf, who went 3 for 4 to lead UAM, brought the insurance runs across the plate with a 2-run single in the eighth.
Chaz Poppy and Parker Dorrance each had 2 hits for the Weevils. DeShaun Cordova and Dorrance each scored 2 runs.
Missouri Southern (44-14) scored 2 runs in the third, thanks to a Drew Townsend double and Henry Kusiak single. Kusiak and Garrett Rice, who each had 2 hits, launched solo home runs in the sixth.
UAM’s Jacob McDaniel (4-1) worked 3 innings for the win after the Lions got to starter Charles Peacock (4 strikeouts, 4 earned runs on 6 hits). McDaniel held the Lions without a run on 1 hit.
Nelson Mercado threw two-thirds of a clean inning for his 10th save of the season and fourth in his last 4 appearances.
Five Lions took the mound, led by starter Keaton Anderson. He scattered 2 earned runs on 6 hits in 6 1/3 innings and struck out 4 Weevils.
Kyle Kaempf (2-2) suffered the loss after allowing 3 earned runs in 3 at-bats during the UAM seventh.
UAM, which beat Arkansas Tech on Thursday, has started 2-0 in a regional tournament for the first time in program history and made a regional final for just the second time ever. The 2016 Weevils, who went 40-16, made the final round of an eight-team Central Regional but lost to the University of Central Missouri.
The winner of this tournament will take on the winner of the other Central Regional, currently held at Central Missouri, in a best-of-three Super Regional next weekend for a berth in the national finals.