Baseball Doomed by Late Rally in Opening Round Game

Upland, Ind.- The baseball team found themselves in a familiar situation on Monday: the top seed in one of the brackets for the 2023 NAIA Baseball Championship Opening Round. The thing tht was not familiar for the team was the location. The past six opening rounds saw the Bulldogs play in Kingsport, Tenn. In this year's edition, the road took the team to Upland, Ind., where the team was the No. 1 seed in the Upland Bracket. In their first game, the took on the No. 4 seeded Point Park University Pioneers. 

 The teams traded runs in the first inning to send the game in a 1-1 tie to the second inning. Tennessee Wesleyan's run occurred in the bottom halve of the inning when Dan Sayre sent a pitch flying over the center field fence. The top seeded Bulldogs took the lead in the fifth inning.

Carson Ford came to the plate and hit a bomb over the left field fence, breaking the tie to give the team a 2-1 advantage. In the sixth inning, the lead was extended to 3-1. 

The extension came off the bat of Braxton Turner who blasted a ball over the left field fence for the team's two-run lead. The game took an unfortunate turn for TWU in the seventh inning as Point Park scored four runs to take over the lead. The opponents grew their lead in the eighth inning, putting the Bulldogs in an 8-3 hole with two offensive turns remaining. Tennessee Wesleyan scored one more run in the game in the form of Andre Tarver on an Evan Magill RBI double. The offense could not bring in more runs and the Bulldogs fell by a final score of 8-4.

TWU (42-10) drops into the elimination bracket with the loss. The team will face the winner of the game between No. 5 seed Fisher University and No. 3 seed Cumberland University at 6:00 p.m.