Southeast Missouri State baseball team advances to championship round of OVC tournament with win vs. Austin Peay

JACKSON, Tenn. — The 30 minutes that the Southeast Missouri State baseball team had to regroup from what coach Steve Bieser described as a “devastating” loss to No. 2 Jacksonville State before battling No. 3 Austin Peay in an elimination game of the Ohio Valley Conference tournament late Saturday night at The Ballpark wasn’t enough.

Redhawks’ fourth-year coach Steve Bieser could tell that his players hadn’t shaken it off by their slow start against the Govs, but it wasn’t a pep talk from him that provided the needed spark.

All it took was senior Jake Busiek entering in relief and taking control of the game with the season on the line.

The lefty entered with his team trailing by one and shutout APSU over the final 4 1/3 innings. Southeast’s offense broke out over the final two innings to secure a 10-4 victory that sent the Redhawks on to the championship round in the double-elimination tournament.

“Jake Busiek is what got us going,” Bieser said. “He brought energy into the game. He challenged guys to match his intensity and some guys stepped up and matched his intensity, and I thought that was the difference in today’s game.”

The Redhawks responded to an APSU run in the first with three in the top of the second on four hits and an error. They’d only get one baserunner via a walk over the next three innings.

APSU regained the lead in the bottom of the fifth. Starter Adam Pennington loaded the bases full of Govs and then gave up a bases-clearing triple to Chase Hamilton to make it 4-3 APSU.

Busiek entered and hit the first batter he faced when he “let a slider roll a little bit,” but got the next batter to fly out to right to strand runners on the corners.

He struck out five of the six batters he faced over the next two frames. The first hit he allowed was a two-out single to center in the eighth.

APSU’s Alex Robles hit a leadoff single in the bottom of the ninth, but was erased with a 6-3 double play. Busiek’s sixth K ended the game and APSU’s season.

“I guess all year whenever I’ve struggled I’ve kind of beaten myself by putting people on by walking them or hitting them with a pitch or whatever,” Busiek said, “and today I kind of just went up there and focused on pounding the zone and taking it out by out and I ended up just finishing it off.”

Busiek did not walk a batter and 40 of the 59 pitches he threw were for strikes. He improved to 2-2 on the season and helped stabilize the Southeast bullpen for the championship round.

“I saw a senior that wasn’t ready to quit playing baseball and that’s huge to see a guy step up like that,” Bieser said. “When I brought him in the game he pretty much ensured me that he was going to finish the game. It was going to be his game and he was going to keep everything intact and all we had to do was score him some runs.”

The Redhawks knocked starter Josh Rye from the game in the top of the sixth. Garrett Gandolfo led off the inning with a triple that hit off the top of the wall in right center and scored on a groundout to tie it at 4-4 before the Govs brought Robles in to pitch and he retired the next five batters he faced.

Southeast again got a leadoff triple in the eighth and ninth innings — each from Chris Osborne.

In the eighth, Branden Boggetto followed with a RBI single up the middle on the 10th pitch of his at bat for the go-ahead run. Gandolfo doubled and Dan Holst was intentionally walked to load the bases with no outs for Hunter Leeper. Leeper, who went 3 for 5, worked a full count and ripped one down the right-field line for a three-run double that pushed Southeast’s lead to 8-4.

“Taking really good swings at good pitches to hit, but not being over-aggressive, not trying to do too much,” Gandolfo said of the key to the offensive success. “Just putting the sweet spot on the ball in good counts, in big situations, and just playing baseball the right way.”

Boggetto plated Osborne with a sacrifice fly in the top of the ninth after his leadoff triple to make it a five-run game.

Gandolfo, who went 4-for-5, and Holst hit back to back singles and Gandolfo scored his fourth run of the game when Leeper doubled off the wall in left center for the final score.

“I haven't been swinging it good lately, but I don’t care,” Gandolfo said of his mindset at the plate. “I’m going to go out there and do what I can to help my team win.”

Southeast outhit APSU 13-10 in the contest. The Redhawks had one error on a catcher’s interference in the first inning while the Govs committed three.

“We just knew we had to do whatever it took to win,” Busiek said. “The position guys, all the hitters, I mean, that’s just an unbelievable effort by them to come back and swing it like that again. Eighteen innings for those guys in 12 hours or whatever it was, that’s just unbelievable. That’s just a great job by them setting the tone.”

The Redhawks, winners of three straight OVC regular-season titles, improved to 37-19 and tied the program record for wins.

No. 1 Southeast will face JSU, which defeated Southeast 11-7 on Saturday, at noon Sunday. For Southeast to win the OVC tournament title and secure the league’s automatic bid to an NCAA regional it will have to win twice, at noon then again in a 4 p.m. contest.

“We just need to stay focused. Very, very focused,” Gandolfo said. “This is really hard to do. But as long as we can stay focused, stay out of big innings, create big innings and just stay relaxed and play the game like we know how to play it, as hard as we can, we’re going to win.”