Game One Box Score
Game Two Box Score
EDMOND (March 1) – Yet another extra-inning game resulted in a coaching milestone for Central Oklahoma's Wendell Simmons Sunday afternoon at cold and windy Broncho Field.
UCO went extra innings for the sixth time in 17 outings before pulling out a 5-4 first-game triumph over East Central on Blake Mitchell's run-scoring double in the bottom of the ninth inning to give Simmons his 600th career win, with the Bronchos coming back to take a 10-6 victory in the nightcap to complete the doubleheader sweep.
“Winning 600 games means I've been around a long time and we've had a lot of good players come through here,” said Simmons, now 601-326-1 in his 18th year at the UCO helm. “We still made some mistakes that hurt us, but we did a lot of good things and picked up two wins we needed to have.”
The Bronchos improved to 8-9 on the year and 5-7 in Lone Star Conference play in earning a four-game series split with ECU, which had swept a twinbill in Ada on Friday.
UCO took a 2-0 first-inning lead in the opener as Luke Yost had an RBI fielder's choice and John Bryant drew a bases-loaded walk, with the Tigers coming back to score single runs in the second, third and fourth innings to nab a 3-2 advantage.
The Bronchos tied it in the fourth on Yost's sacrifice fly that scored Wade Gordy, who had led off the inning with a single, and Yost came through again in the sixth with an line-drive double to left field that scored Mitchell for a 4-3 lead.
ECU scored on an error in the top of the seventh to tie it and UCO blew a golden opportunity to win it in the bottom of that inning, using two errors and a hit to load the bases with no outs only to have the Tigers escape unscathed.
Neither team threatened again until the bottom of the ninth when Ryan Schoonover reached second on a one-out throwing error by the pitcher and he easily scored the winning run when Mitchell drove a two-out, two-strike pitch to the left-center field gap.
Mitchell, Bryant and Casey Bruns had two hits apiece to lead UCO's 10-hit attack, while Tyler Bishop picked up the pitching win with two innings of one-hit relief.
The Bronchos used a pair of four-run outbursts to take control in the second game, breaking a 1-1 tie in the third inning with the first one and opening up a 9-1 lead in the fifth with the second.
Jason Monko had the big blow in the fourth with a two-run triple, while Nate Mitani and Andrew Foshee added RBI singles. UCO made it 9-1 with the fifth-inning volley as Bruns, Foshee and Schoonover all had run-scoring hits and the Tigers couldn't catch up.
Yost, Monko, Bruns and Foshee all had two-hit games to pace the Bronchos. Kyle Head started and went the first 5 2/3 innings to earn the win, while Brent Miller picked up his first save by going the final 3 1/3 innings.
UCO returns to action Tuesday, meeting Science and Arts of Oklahoma in a single nine-inning game at 3 p.m.
