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Box Score 2 OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. --- The Wayland baseball team just missed recording its second straight road upset over a ranked opponent on Thursday afternoon, as No. 2 Oklahoma City had to rally late to defeat the Pioneers, 5-4. The Stars won the second game of the doubleheader, 7-0.
Just three days after upsetting No. 18 Lubbock Christian, WBU held a 4-2 lead over OCU until Miguel Beltran hit a walk-off bases-clearing double with one out in the bottom of the seventh to give his team its 38th victory of the season.
The Stars took the early lead with two runs in the first. The Pioneers answered in the top of the second with back-to-back doubles by Josh Chinni and Johnny Hendrixson, and a RBI single off the bat of Bernie Rosario.
Wayland went on top in the third after Chinni hit his team-leading 18th homer of the season. The Pioneers added another run in the inning after Hendrixson posted his second straight double and then crossed the plate on Ben Christian's base hit.
The Pioneers outhit the Stars 10-8. Chinni, Hendrixson, Brian Allen and Christian each had a pair of hits.
Senior Kevin Burbank pitched the complete game. The southpaw struck out six and walked three, throwing 124 pitches in 6-1/3 innings of work. He did not allow a Star baserunner in the second and fifth innings, and faced just one past the minimum in the third and sixth.
After getting ten hits in the opener, the Pioneer bats were silenced in the nightcap. OCU pitcher Blake Schwartz, who improved to 9-2 on the season, held WBU to two hits – singles by Josh Carroll in the first and Rosario in the fifth.
Calvin Bass was the only other Pioneer to reach base in the contest with walks in the first and the sixth innings.
Freshman Paxton Bartley was the most effective of four Wayland pitchers. Bartley threw two shutout innings allowing two hits and striking out two, the only two strikeouts by Pioneer pitching in the game.
The Pioneers (15-38, 6-23) will conclude their season with the series finale against the Stars (39-8, 25-4) beginning at 1 pm on Friday.
