Pride use pitching and timely hitting to take Heart Tournament opener over Culver-Stockton

OZARK, Mo. - In their first postseason game since 2023, the Clarke University baseball team opened the Heart of America Athletic Conference Tournament with a 4-1 victory over Culver-Stockton College in the first game of the day at the Ozark Mountain Sports Complex.

Playing the game as the visiting team, the Pride were able to jump out to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first when Dean Ormonde and Cole Swartz started the game with back-to-back singles and an error in the outfield made it second and third with no outs.

Alden Brown would bat with the runners still on second and third but now with one out as he'd put CU on the board with a sacrifice fly to center field to give the Pride an early lead.

Brown and Ormonde would be two of five Clarke hitters with two-hit games that included Ki Crowder as the senior would lead the top of the second off with his first hit of the game where he would later be driven in by another sacrifice fly from William Ramirez to make it 2-0 after two.

A quiet third and a Crowder walk in the fourth set up a two-out situation for Randy Lopez Acosta as the Pride center fielder would rope a ball down the left field line for a double as Crowder would race all the way home from first to make it 3-0.

That would end up being plenty for the Clarke pitching unit of starter Christian Prull and relievers Kurisu Ueta and Jacob Monday as Prull would allow his only run of the game in the bottom of the fourth to make it 3-1 but would be nails throughout his six-inning outing allowing seven hits and walking two batters with four strikeouts.

Bryn Vantiger would be the last member of the lineup to join the two-hit club when he produced the fourth Pride run of the day with a two-out, two-strike RBI single to left to make it 4-1 in the top of the eighth.

Ueta and Monday were nearly blemish free in their three innings of work out of the CU bullpen as Ueta entered in the seventh to go two innings allowing just one walk and a hit batter but eliminated the walk with a line drive double play to end the seventh. Monday threw a scoreless nine allowing a hit but nothing more for his sixth save of the season and his third in the Pride's last four games.

Clarke now moves to the next round where they will play the day's final game in Ozark, Mo. when they play No. 2 seed MidAmerica Nazarene University with a scheduled 8:30 p.m. CT start time at Ozark Mountain Sports Complex.