CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo.– The University of Tennessee at Martin baseball team battled but fell 9-3 to Southeast Missouri in Game 2 of the weekend series.
Andrew Fernandez (two RBI’s) homered while Mac Danford (one walk) and Blaze Bell (one walk) enjoyed multi-hit games. Jalen Fithian and Zac Rice also picked up base hits for the Skyhawks.
Eric Steensma (3-8) started the game for UT Martin (20-33, 12-14 Ohio Valley Conference) with Choyce Diffey (two innings pitched, one strikeout) and Zach Wager (2.2 innings pitched, season-high five strikeouts) making appearances out of the bullpen.
Steensma started his outing with a 1-2-3 frame after a ground out, foul out and pop out. In the second, SEMO (30-24, 17-9 OVC) brought in a run off a ground out that was shortly followed by an inning ending pop out to Alec Beaman.
Steensma ended the third by scoring two fly outs after the Redhawks extended their lead by two. Diffey entered in the fourth to get the final two outs from a pop out and punch out after SEMO built their advantage to six.
Diffey worked around two hits and a run to leave one Redhawk stranded on pop out to close the frame. The Skyhawk bats came alive in the sixth after a lead off double from Rice sparked back-to-back extra base hits from Fithian (double) and Fernandez (two-run homer) as UT Martin started to cut into the SEMO lead.
Wager came in to the sixth to finish out the final two outs and leave runners at the corners after fanning two straight batters. The sophomore continued his outing with two more K’s and a fly out to conclude a perfect inning.
Two more runs came across for the Redhawks in the eighth and they were able to shut the door in the ninth and secure the series victory.
UT Martin will look to take the regular season finale tomorrow at 2 p.m. on ESPN+.
