ALLIANCE, Ohio -- Mount Union's baseball team got a couple solid pitching performances along with some clutch hitting to sweep Muskingum 5-4 and 13-5 in an Ohio Athletic Conference series Wednesday at 23rd Street Field.

The sweep improved the Purple Raiders record to 16-14 overall and at 6-6 in the OAC they are three games back with six games to play.

Muskingum falls to 13-15 overall and 5-7 in the OAC.

The first game was scoreless until the bottom of the fourth inning when Adam Bialosky (Medina/Highland) led off the inning with a single, stole second and game home on a one-out single from Nick Piotrowski (Macedonia/Nordonia).  Piotrowski would later score on a Muskie error to give Mount Union a 2-0 lead.

Muskingum would get one back in the fifth but Raiders would strike in the sixth as the first two reached then Billy Goodall (Canfield/South Range) would clear the bases with a triple and make it 4-1. James Weber (Auburn, Ind./Garrett) would then bring Goodall home on a sacrfice fly RBI to extend the lead to 5-1.

The Muskies would rally with three runs in the seventh but Mount Union end the threat as Sam Clarke (Strongsville/Strongsville) pitched a scoreless ninth for his second save of the season.

The Raiders got a strong pitching performance from sophomore lefty Noah Skaldan (Amherst/Steele) who allowed just a run on four hits over the first six innings to improve to 2-1 on the season.

In game two, Muskingum would score four runs on five hits in the first inning but Darren Kroilkowski (Independence/Independence) would come out of the pen in that inning and save the day as he went the final 8.1 innings allowing just four hits to get his first win of the season.

Krolikowski's efforts gave the offense time to catch up but they only needed a half inning as the Raiders scored five runs in the bottom of the first to take a 5-4 lead.  Mount Union had two triples in the inning as Scott Sherwood (Mentor/Mentor) brought home a run on one while Conner Koski (Highland Heights/Mayfield) had another that scored two runs.

Muskingum tied the game at 5-5 in the second inning on a home run from Christian Leitenberger.

The game stayed tied until the fourth inning when the Raiders sent 11 batters to the plate and scored seven runs to take a 13-5 lead.  Tyler Simcox (Akron/Ellet) had the big hit in the inning with a two-run triple.

Simcox drove in four runs on three hits, Koski drove in three runs while Bialosky and Lake each had three hits to pace a Mount Union offense that had 17 hits in the game.

Mount Union goes on the road to play Otterbein in an OAC series Saturday at 1 p.m. in Westerville.