Pride fall into loser's bracket of Heart Tournament with 5-0 loss to No. 12 Central Methodist

OZARK, Mo. - In their first meeting of the season against No. 12 Central Methodist University, the Clarke University baseball team fell to the Eagles by a final score of 5-0 on Saturday night.

The Pride were hindered by CMU starting pitcher Beau Adkins as he threw a complete game shutout to limit the Pride to just two hits and only walked two batters over the nine innings.

CU starter Jake Fiorito threw a strong seven innings while allowing four runs on seven hits with no walks and six strikeouts as it was a three-run third inning that put the Eagles in front early.

Those runs in the third came from three-straight two-out hits from CMU as a Tommaso Giarola double, Robbie Merced triple, and Tanner Sears single scored those runs to put Central Methodist in front.

Clarke had their opportunity in the bottom half of the third as they loaded the bases with one out for the heart of the order but Adkins was able to force a strikeout and a fly out to keep CU off the board and maintain momentum into the middle of the game.

The Eagles would stay off the board until the seventh inning where they would add a run in both the seventh and eighth to extend their lead to 5-0 as the Pride would put runners on base each of the last three innings but couldn't get them home to finish the game with 10 runners left on base.

In the double elimination format, Clarke baseball will drop down to the loser's bracket where they will face the No. 6 seed Baker on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. CT and will move on to play again at 8:30 p.m. CT against the winner of the first game of the day between Peru State and Mount Mercy.