Baseball Falls Twice to Lawrence on Saturday

by Nathan Baliva

MONMOUTH, Ill. (05/04/2024) — The Monmouth College baseball team lost a pair of home games to first place Lawrence on Saturday. The Scots (17-20, 10-13) were officially eliminated from the MWC Tournament race with the 10-2 and 6-1 losses.

In game one, Lawrence hit three solo home runs in the first two innings and also scored a run off an error to lead 4-0. They added two more in the third against Monmouth starter Cade Sharp (Aledo, Illinois)

Clayton Matkovic (Sherrard, Illinois) led off the Monmouth third with a single and he moved to second on a wild pitch. Matkovic scored as Tyler Houck (Park Ridge, Illinois) reached on a 3-base throwing error by the Lawrence pitcher. Daniel Lummus (New Port Richey, Florida) singled home Houck to cut the Vikings lead to 6-2 but a double play stalled the inning.

Lawrence pushed the lead to 9-2 with a 3-run homer in the fourth. Clayton Rentshcler (Riverton, Illinois) took over on the mound for Sharp and got the final out of the fifth inning. The Vikings plated the final run of the game in the ninth to win 10-2.

Sharp (3-5) took the loss, allowing eight earned runs over 4 2/3 innings with one strikeout. Rentschler allowed one run on four hits over 4 1/3 innings while striking out four

GAME TWO

The Vikings took an early lead in game two with a run scoring on the second single of the inning after a balk by Monmouth starter Toby Turnquist (Monmouth, Illinois). The teams sat through a lightning delay in the middle of the second inning, and neither team scored until the fifth when the Vikings took a 3-0 lead.

Lawrence added three more in the top of the seventh to lead 6-0. With one out in the seventh, Alexander Dye (Albuquerque, New Mexico) walked and Aidan Parkins (Monmouth, Illinois) reached on an error. Dye scored on a passed ball to get the Scots on the board.

Turnquist (2-4) took the loss, allowing six runs over seven innings while striking out four. Both Brandon Coats (Mapleton, Illinois) and Nick Villa (El Segundo, California) had scoreless innings of relief. Both relievers recorded a strikeout.

MONMOUTH MOMENTS: Matkovic had two hits in the opener and leads the Scots with 16 multi-hit games With two hits in the opener, Lummus has 14 multi-hit games on the season All 10 Monmouth hits on the day were singles Eric Campen (Washington, Illinois) had the first two hits of his college career in game two Sharp ranks eighth on the Monmouth career list with 40 pitching appearances Rentschler tied his season and career highs with four strikeouts, the third time he's accomplished that feat He is the ninth pitcher this season to make at least 10 appearances on the mound The Scots are 12-7 all-time against Lawrence, 7-4 under Betourne Monmouth won the season series in 2011, 2018, 2022 and 2023 The last time Lawrence won a season series of more than one game was 1979 The final game of the series and the regular season is Sunday at Noon in Monmouth Sunday is Senior Day.