The 11th-ranked University of Wisconsin-Whitewater baseball team opened a weekend series at James B. Miller Stadium in Whitewater Friday by defeating UW-Stout 6-5 and 13-4. The Warhawks improve to 25-12 overall and 11-7 in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference while the Blue Devils drop to 14-22 overall and 4-14 in the league. The teams will conclude the series, along with WIAC regular season play, in a doubleheader on Saturday beginning at noon.

Game one was littered with lead changes, hits and errors.

The Blue Devils took the first lead of the game scoring one run in the top of the first.

Matt Wary (Elk Grove, Ill./Elk Grove) bunted in a run with the bases loaded in the bottom of the inning to tie the game at one.

Stout regained the lead in the top of the second scoring on a one-out single to center field.

An inning and a half later Steve Chamberlain (Rockford, IL/Guilford) singled to center and moved up two bases on an errant pickoff attempt by the pitcher. The next batter, Austin Jones (Wauwatosa, Wis./West), put the ball in play, but another error allowed him to reach and Chamberlain to score and tie the game at two.

The Warhawks took their first lead of the game in the bottom of the fourth after stringing together three hits with two outs. Just Wegner got it started with a single up the middle and Jordan Kuczynski(Germantown/Germantown) followed with a single to right. Blake Fleischman (Germantown, Wis./Germantown) plated Wegner in the next at bat with a single up the middle to give UW-W a 3-2 advantage.

The game was tied up again after the top of the fifth when Stout scored a run aided by a Warhawk error.

UW-W went ahead 4-3 in the bottom of the sixth when Cal Aldridge (Crystal Lake, Ill./Prairie Ridge), who reached base with a leadoff double to center, came around to score on a throwing error later in the inning.

The lead was short lived as Stout scored two in the top of the seventh for a 5-4 lead.

The Warhawks retaliated with a run in the bottom of the frame to again tie the score, and plated the go ahead run in the eighth on a Fleischman solo homerun down the right field line.

Jones moved from centerfield to the mound for the ninth inning to earn the save, his fourth of the season.Ankur Shah (St. Charles, Ill./St. Charles North) tallied the victory, pitching eight innings and striking out four.

The Warhawks fell behind 2-0 after one and half innings in game two, but inched closer with a run in the bottom of the second, and tied it up in the bottom of the third.

A six-run outburst in the bottom of the fourth gave the Warhawks an 8-2 lead; one that they never relinquished. 

UW-W added two more in the fifth and one in the seventh to open up an 11-2 lead before the Blue Devils pushed two across in the top of the eighth to make it 11-4.

A wild pitch allowed two more Warhawks to cross home plate in the eighth to bring the final score of game two to 13-4.

Heath Renz (Jefferson, Wis./Jefferson) scattered nine hits across seven and a third to earn the win in game two and move to 5-0 this season. James Georgakas (Ellsworth, Wis./Ellsworth) came on in relief and struckout two.

The Warhawks collected 19 runs and 26 hits in the doubleheader. Fleischman was 6-for-8 with 3 runs and 4 RBIs in the two games while third baseman Cal Aldridge (Crystal Lake, Ill./Prairie Ridge) went 3-for-6 with 4 runs and 5 RBIs.