Baseball loses fourth series of season against Butler
Ky Matthews-Hampton, a graduate right handed pitcher, throws to Butler University during the baseball game against at Coaches Stadium Sunday afternoon. The Panthers lost 6-5, and are now 15-8 in season play.
April 3, 2023
The Eastern Illinois baseball team failed to come back against Butler as it lost 6-5 and 2-0 in a doubleheader at Coaches Stadium Sunday afternoon.
The Panthers are now 15-9 overall and 1-2 in Ohio Valley Conference play as they were on an OVC bye week against the Bulldogs.
During the first game, the Panthers kept up with the Bulldogs as graduate student right-hander Ky Matthews-Hampton threw five shutout innings before giving up two runs in the sixth.
Hampton is currently second in the OVC in pitching with a 2.43 ERA.
After that, the Bulldogs scored three unanswered runs in the game’s late innings. But in the ninth inning, junior utility player Cole Gober got on base thanks to an error by the Bulldogs’ shortstop.
Back-to-back doubles by red-shirt junior Nicholas Rucker and junior catcher Grant Lashure made it a 5-4 game.
The Panthers were down to the final out with red-shirt junior pinch hitter Kolten Poorman.
He singled to left field tying the game 5-5, making the game go into extra innings. Poorman talked about how the event unfolded.
“I had a quick meeting with Coach Francis there you know,” Poorman said. “He told me and the other guys about seventy percent slider. So, I took a pretty good fastball and on the second pitch I was sitting and slaughtered it.”
The game went on several extra innings with neither team scoring. On a sunny afternoon day, with no clouds in sight, the game was going on to a breezy evening.
During extras, the Panthers had a couple of opportunities to end the game but left all four runners on base.
Coach Jason Anderson said he believed his team could have won.
“We had them on the ropes the entire game,” Anderson said. “We want to get away with winning. It probably had four or five different endings and they could get it.”
Unfortunately, Butler scored in the top of the 14th and the Panthers could not get their runners home.
The second game did not have much momentum as the Panthers got shut out in seven innings and only got four hits total from Lincoln Riley, Jarred Evans, and Nicholas Rucker.
Red-shirt senior right-hander Blake Malatestinic threw six innings and allowed the two runs that would end up being the final score, one of them being a home run in the second inning.
Anderson said that the lack of adjustments contributed to the final score.
“There were no adjustments,” Anderson said. “That is why we lost offensively. That was as bad as a game that I’ve seen at the college level and history of me watching baseball games.”
Anderson also said that the Panthers were down on themselves which affected their batting.
“We got to have better at-bats,” Anderson said. “I think we are having self-restraint and guys are kind of down on themselves.
The Panthers will be on the road as they will pick back up with OVC play against SIUE on Thursday starting at 5 p.m.
Sofia Turek can be reached at 581-2812 or smturek@eiu.edu
