Carpenter’s bulldogged effort moves Hawks into title game, but Prairie Stars capture GLVC crown

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — Tyler Carpenter’s effort proved inspiring.

That should benefit the Quincy University baseball team in the long run, even if Sunday ended without a conference championship.

A left-hander hurler who mostly had been used out of the bullpen this season, Carpenter put the Hawks in the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament championship game with an eight-inning, 126-pitch effort that resulted in a 9-4 victory over Lewis in Sunday morning’s elimination game.

A balky offense and a nightmare inning resulted in Illinois-Springfield hammering the Hawks 16-3 in the title game Sunday afternoon at Lindenwood’s Lou Brock Sports Complex, but it didn’t cost much as far as NCAA Tournament seeding works.

They were going to end up heading to Michigan either way.

Now they head there with a bounce-back mentality.

“Whether someone else punches us in the face or we punch ourselves in the face, we have to stand up and punch back,” QU coach Matt Schissel said.

That was the case Sunday morning.

The Flyers forced the Hawks into an elimination game with Saturday’s 6-4 victory, and Carpenter made sure there wasn’t a repeat. He limited the Flyers to one run the first seven innings as the Hawks built a 7-1 lead.

Three runs in the eighth inning cost him the chance for a complete game, but his eight strikeouts against one walk and overall command of the strike zone gave the bullpen a breather and dumbfounded Lewis.

“I liked the pitch sequencing we did against that team,” said Carpenter, whose previous longest outing was seven innings against Illinois-Springfield on March 26 when he threw 114 pitches. “I worked all three of my pitches pretty well, kept good hitters off-balance and just kept competing.”

The only damage the Flyers really did came with two outs in the eighth inning when a pair of infield singles led to a three-run rally.

“I started getting tired in that last inning,” Carpenter said. “My command kind of veered a little towards the end. But when he told me I reached 126 pitches, I had no idea. I figured I was at 100 or so pitches. I think the adrenaline and the emotions of trying to get that spot in the championship game took over for most of that game.”

He benefited from an offense that was jumpstarted by Nolan Wosman’s two-run homer in the second inning. Wosman went 2 for 3 with three runs scored and eight of the nine hitters in the lineup had at least one hit. Right fielder Adam Lewis didn’t get many chances to hit as he walked three times.

The mojo the Hawks seemed to find offensively was lost against Illinois-Springfield.

Quincy was limited to one hit over the first innings and finished with just three hits. Dayson Croes had a two-run single in the ninth inning. 

“We’ve got a little work to do offensively,” Schissel said. “We need to take pressure off the pitching staff. For the arms we saw this weekend, I was very underwhelmed with our offense. I think that’s where we have to put our focus this week.

“Defense is fine. It’s a little easier to play defense when you’re hitting well. If we get hitting, I think we have the staff to make a run here.”

The fifth game in the four-day tournament required the Hawks to lean on the bullpen for innings, and after giving up just two runs in the first four innings, the wheels fell off in the fifth. The Prairie Stars scored eight times, hitting two home runs and getting a two-run triple.

They tacked on two more runs in the sixth and four more in the eighth inning.

“We really didn’t play our game today and we know we’re much better than how we played today,” Carpenter said. “Once we kind of fine tune that in practice this week, I think we’re going to be perfectly fine.”