BOWLING GREEN, Ohio – The Western Michigan baseball team bounced back from a series-opening loss on Friday with a 6-4 win over first-place Bowling Green on Saturday afternoon to even the weekend series at one game apiece.
FINAL SCORE: Western Michigan 6, Bowling Green 4
LOCATION: Steller Field (Bowling Green, Ohio)
RECORDS: Western Michigan (24-19, 14-9 MAC) | Bowling Green (26-16, 19-4)
W: Nolan Vlcek (4-2) |
L: Landon Willeman (1-2) |
Save: Luke Thelen (1)
CJ Richmond tied his career high with four hits and drove in a pair of runs. He and
Dylan Nevar both reached the 50-RBI mark for the season on Saturday, making the duo the first Western Michigan teammates to have 50 or more RBIs in the same year since Matt Mieske and Damon Saetre in 1989.
It was the Broncos who opened the scoring for the second straight day, as Richmond broke the ice with an RBI single in the top of the first.
After
Nolan Vlcek stymied a Bowling Green threat in the bottom of the first, Western Michigan came right back with three more in the second.
Cade Sullivan brought in a run with a ground ball, Nevar plated one with a sacrifice fly and Richmond delivered another run-scoring base hit to push the margin to 4-0.
Sullivan's RBI was the 155th of his WMU career, which broke a tie with Chris Lewis (2007-10) for second-most in program history.
The Falcons answered with four, one of which was unearned, in the bottom of the second to even up the contest at 4-4.
The game remained tied until the fifth, when WMU went back on top.
Grady Mee executed a safety squeeze bunt to bring
Greg Budig in to score, and
Jackson Kitchen then doubled down the left field line to plate
Brendan Harrity and make it 6-4 in favor of the Broncos.
Vlcek settled in after the second inning, retiring nine Falcons in a row at one point and facing just one more than the minimum over his final four innings of work. The senior earned his fourth win of the season, tied for the team lead, after yielding three earned runs and striking out three over his 6.0 innings of work.
Luke Thelen came into the game in the bottom of the seventh and picked up right where Vlcek left off. The redshirt junior set down nine of the 10 Falcons he faced over the final three innings to collect his first collegiate save.
The duo of Vlcek and Thelen combined to shut out BGSU and limit it to just two hits in the final seven innings of the game. The Falcons entered the weekend as the third-highest scoring offense in the nation.
The rubber match of the three-game series between the Broncos and Falcons is set for Sunday afternoon. First pitch is scheduled for 1 pm on
ESPN+.
