Baseball | 2/10/2020 9:43:00 AM

Box Score 1 | Box Score 2 The Oklahoma Panhandle State University Baseball Team ended their four-game series with the Southern Nazarene University Crimson Storm with a doubleheader Sunday in Bethany, Oklahoma. Both games were edge-of-your-seat entertainment, but ultimately the Aggies (1-7) could not weather the Storm, losing by scores of 4-2 and 6-5.
 
The opener proved to be another close one for the Aggies. Junior Markus Bracey put it together at the plate and on the mound. In his first appearance and start, he tallied 4.1 innings of work, allowing six hits and three earned runs, while striking out four Storm players. On the offensive end, Bracey scored the first run of the game in the first inning, and in his next at-bat, hit a moonshot over the right-center wall to give OPSU the lead, 2-1, after SNU tied it in the previous inning.
 
The Storm took the lead, 3-2, in the fourth on a couple of hit-by-pitches and a double. Junior Garrison Armstrong came on in relief in the bottom of the fifth with two runners on and one out. Armstrong came up big after giving up a hit to load the bases, by getting a pop-out and a strike out to come out of the inning unscathed. He ended the game pitching in 1.2 innings, allowing two hits and striking out one.
 
The Aggies were out-hit 8-6, and as it was a close battle in that regard, the four errors by Panhandle State seemed were a big part of the deciding factor in this one.
 
Junior Bryson Hackley, who had his first career at-bat the day before, got his first career start at third base and found himself with a two-hit game, going 2-3 with a double.
 
Keeping the trend of the last two games, the series finale turned out to be the biggest nail-biter of them all. OPSU scored in the first inning, marking in the third game in a row they had done so. The Aggies scored in each of the first three innings. In the first, Bracey scored on a throwing error off the bat of Luis Rodriguez, after a leadoff base hit to open up the game. Jonathan Applebury drove in Aaron Moreno on a single up the middle. In the second, Rodriguez drove in Chris Schraer on a line shot to center and in the third, Schraer got in on the action by driving in Applebury on a rope to right-center, thus completing the game of "musical chairs" of runs batted in for the Aggies in the early innings.
 
Freshman pitcher Corbin Yandell was given the nod for his first collegiate start and he did not disappoint. Yandell had 4.2 great innings of work, giving up six hits and one earned run, striking out three. However, the Southern Nazarene Storm rained on the freshman's parade by clawing their way back in to this one. Junior Orin McGee came in to shut the door on a rally at the end of the fifth, but SNU scored four in the sixth to tie it up, 5-5.
 
McGee, Austin Jacobs, and Charlie Marini all came on in relief but each gave up at least one run. Armstrong made his second appearance of the day and was able to get out of the sixth inning jam, but found himself with bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh and a tie game. Southern Nazarene's Landon Walker put a bunt down to score Zac Brown on a perfectly executed suicide squeeze to give SNU the win and complete the series sweep.
 
The last three games of the series the Aggies showed their potential offensively. Head Coach Shawn Joy says of his team: "when this team develops the winning mentality, they will have a lot of success."
 
Panhandle State baseball will play again on Wednesday, February 12th, against Southwestern College (Kan.) in Woodward, Oklahoma.