The Carthage College baseball team (25-12, 12-9 College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin) closed out its regular-season schedule on Sunday, May 3 with 4-1 loss to Concordia University (Wis., 22-17) at Kapco Field in Mequon, Wis.
Carthage manufactured a run in the second inning on a couple of singles, a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly by Mike Farias. The game turned into a pitcher's duel between the Red Men's Dalton Sjong and the Falcons' Tyler Adams. There was no other scoring until the bottom of the seventh when Concordia took a 2-1 lead on a two-out, two-run single by Michael Szeszol. The Falcons added a couple of insurance runs in the eighth when Joel Sharon tripled and scored on a wild pitch, followed by an RBI-single by Nathan Thyssen.
Tyler Adams (3-1) was the winning pitcher, and limited the Red Men to one run on six hits and no walks over seven inning. Dylan Gausman held Carthage hitless over the final two frames to pick up his first save of the season. Dalton Sjong (Jr., Paddock Lake, Wis./Salem-Westosha Central, 2-2) took the loss and went seven innings and allowed just two runs on eight hits, a walk and four strikeouts.
Carthage opens play in the CCIW Baseball Tournament on Thursday, May 7 versus top-seeded North Central College in a Noon first-round game at the North Central College's Zimmerman Stadium/Alumni Field in Naperville, Ill. Second-seeded Wheaton College (Ill.) plays third-seeded Illinois Wesleyan University in the other first-round contest, beginning at 3 p.m. The tournament continues on Friday, May 8 with games at 9:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. The Red Men will be making their first appearance in the tournament since 2011 after missing the event the last three years.
"We saw why North Central was the best team in the conference," said Carthage coach Augie Schmidt IV. "They have two very good pitchers and nice group of upperclassmen on the field. They've got a nice team, but we saw that we can play with them. It's just a matter of putting it all together. We're going to have to play really good and really smart baseball this week. We held Jared Helmich back from pitching this past weekend, so we can use him in Thursday's game. North Central hasn't seen him, so we're hoping that gives us a little bit of an edge. This is going to be tough tournament. Wheaton might be the hottest team in the country right now. "