ADA, Ohio – Mount Union's baseball team split a pair of Ohio Athletic Conference games at Ohio Northern – winning the opener 8-5 and falling in the nightcap 10-8 – Saturday at Wander Field in Ada.
The split still leaves the Purple Raiders at the top of the conference standings at 12-7 overall and 3-1 in the OAC, while Northern is 9-10 overall and 2-2 in the OAC.
In the 8-5 win in game one, Eric Schilling (Stow / Stow-Munroe Falls) drove in four runs on 3-for-5 hitting, Colman Stauffer (Boardman) drove in two runs and Walker Marlowe (Berlin Center / Western Reserve) drove in a run as the Raiders out-hit Northern 13-9 and took advantage of four errors.
One of those ONU errors was on a steal attempt in first inning and gave the Raiders a 1-0 lead, but Northern tied the game with a run in the bottom of the first.
ONU errors extended both the fourth and fifth innings and Mount Union scored two in the fourth on a Stauffer double, then Schilling brought one home on a single in the fifth which gave the Raiders a 4-1 lead.
Northern got one run back in the fifth but the Raiders went to the long ball in the seventh on a three-run home run from Schilling and a solo shot from Marlowe to extend the lead to 8-2.
ONU rallied with back-to-back home runs from Corey McMann and Nate Webb to close to 8-5 but Mount Union ended the threat there for the win.
Thomas Gallant (Pataskala / Watkins Memorial) got the win on the mound as he scattered six hits over five innings and struck out eight to move his record 5-1 while Ryan Osman (Pittsburgh, Pa. / Moon) worked the final four innings to pick up his fourth save.
In game two, Northern used five different pitchers to hold Mount Union to just six hits in a 10-8 Polar Bear win.
Schilling had three more hits and three more RBI which gave him six hits and seven RBI on the day.
Once again, an error on steal attempt started the scoring for Mount Union with a run in the first inning and Schilling had an RBI single to make it 2-0.
Northern scored three in the fourth to take the lead, but Zack Mazza (Flint, Mich. / Powers Catholic) gave it back to the Raiders with a two-run home run in the fifth.
ONU scored seven unanswered in the sixth and seventh to take a 10-4 lead but rallied with four in the eighth – two coming on a Schilling home run to get to 10-8 but the Raiders' rally stopped there.
Carson Davis (Louisville) went 5.2 innings, struck out eight but surrendered eight runs to fall to 2-3 on the season.
Mount Union hosts Penn State-Behrend in a single non-conference game Sunday at 1 p.m. at Rafeld-Rogers Field.
