In its season opener Friday night against North Florida in Jacksonville, the Missouri baseball team simply ran out of comebacks.
The Tigers fell behind 2-0, then tied it by the fifth inning. North Florida took a 3-2 lead and lost it in the next half-inning. Missouri fell behind 4-3 and quickly tied it at 4-4.
But when the Ospreys pulled ahead 5-4 in the bottom of the eighth, the Tigers had no more answers.
Alex Peterson got on base to lead off the ninth and reached second base, but he was stranded there. Pinch-hitter Thomas Broyles grounded back to the pitcher with two on and two out to end the game.
North Florida took the lead for good in the eighth when Jay Prather hit a leadoff double, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on a deep flyout to right. The double came against sophomore righty Ian Bedell, who was working in his third inning out of the bullpen. Junior lefty TJ Sikkema couldn’t keep Prather from coming home, issuing the wild pitch and allowing the deep fly ball to put the Ospreys on top.
Bedell entered to begin the sixth after junior starter Tyler LaPlante turned in five middling innings. The left-hander allowed eight hits and three runs, walked one and struck out three.
Missouri head coach Steve Bieser said on the radio postgame show that his trio of pitchers did enough to give the Tigers a chance, but his offense couldn’t seize it.
“They kept us in the ballgame. We just needed to do more behind them,” Bieser said.
Missouri managed nine hits off a trio of Osprey hurlers. Righty starter Brad Deppermann was chased in the fifth after Peterson’s deep foul-out brought home a run to tie the game at 2-all.
Then Nick Marchese took the ball and allowed two runs as he pitched through the eighth. Chris Cornelius, MU’s most effective hitter on Friday night, tagged the senior right-hander for a pair of game-tying hits: a hard-hit RBI double in the top of the sixth inning and a game-tying homer in the eighth.
But Cornelius’ two hits couldn’t match the production of North Florida’s Wes Weeks and Tanner Murphy.
Weeks, the Ospreys’ leadoff hitter, and Murphy, their No. 3 hitter and an Atlantic Sun Preseason All-Conference selection, each went 4-for-4, contributing in and of themselves eight of North Florida’s 11 hits of the night.
Weeks and Murphy each hit run-scoring singles off LaPlante, and Weeks homered off Bedell in the seventh to put UNF up 4-3.
Cornelius’ homer one half-inning later tied it, but the Tigers couldn’t hold the Ospreys down for long.
Missouri’s offense got close in the ninth with two men on, but Broyles’ comebacker to closer Trace Norkus on a full count ended a tantalizing game for the Tigers. They left 10 men on base, stranding at least one runner in all but the third inning.
“We just couldn’t string anything together,” Bieser said.
With their next game in less than 18 hours, the Tigers must quickly regroup. The second game of the three-game series against North Florida begins at 1:05 p.m. Saturday at Harmon Stadium in Jacksonville.
