COWLEY, WY – The Central Washington University baseball team (9-8-1, 6-4-0) traveled to Wyoming to escape the weather for a four-game series against Montana State University Billings (5-13, 5-5).
 
Tyler Hoefer took the ball for game one and held the explosive Yellow Jacket offense to just four runs in his five innings of work. The junior struck out six hitters and walked just two in the 23 batters that he faced. AJ Wood came on in the sixth and picked up the win. He went 2.2 innings and struck out 2 of the 14 hitters that he faced.
 
The Wildcats bats stayed quiet until the fourth innings. Justin Hampson doubled in the first which proved to be the only hit the Wildcats would get off of MSUB starter until the sixth inning. However, Central was able to get on the board and score in both the fourth and sixth innings.
 
The fourth inning started with a Hampson walk and Mitch Lesmeister getting hit by a pitch. Yi-Fan Pan then reached on a throwing error from the MSUB pitcher after putting down a sacrifice bunt. Pan advanced to second on the error and both Hampson and Lesmeister scored on the play. Michael Peter later brought in Yi-Fan on a fielder's choice to give the Wildcats a 3-2 lead.
 
Hoefer limited the Yellow Jackets to just two in the bottom of the fourth. Heading into the top of the sixth inning, MSUB lead the Wildcats by just one run. Hampson reached on a fielding error to start the inning and was later plated by a Yi-An Pan single through the left side. Pan later scored and gave Central the lead after Peter singled up the middle for his second RBI of the game.
 
Montana State later tied the game in the bottom of the seventh off a wild pitch. In the top of the eight, Lesmeister continued with his hot bat and came up clutch with his second homerun of the season to give the Wildcats the lead yet again. Yi-An Pan came up a batter later and matched Lesmeister's dinger with one of his own making the Wildcat lead 7-5.
 
Wood and Jake Forrester were able to silence the MSUB offense in the bottom of the eighth inning. Central was able to add one more in the top of the ninth after a Robert Ball walked and later came around to score off a Trevor Tripoli single up the middle. Forrester was able to strike out three of the four hitters that he saw in the bottom of the ninth and collected his third save of the season. Central took game one by score of 8-5.
 
"Our bullpen was great today. AJ (Wood) and Jake (Forrester) were able to pick us up and throw strikes which is something we were really emphasized this weekend." Said CWU Head Coach Desi Storey. "Hoefer did a great job giving us five solid innings. But really story of the game was our bats. We were able to execute again and do some of the little things right. Long ball helped us out at the end but that's not something we rely on so it was good to grind out the win in game one."
 
The Wildcats offense picked up right where they left off in game two. Central jumped out to a 6-0 lead after the top of the first. The action started with Hampson collecting another double on the day this one to the opposite side of the field. Yi-Fan singled down the third base line scoring Hampson. Yi-An Pan doubled two pitches later and then both Pan brothers scored on a Peter double.  After a Hassell single scored Peter, Jesse Unger came to the plate for his first at-bat of the game and hit a two-run bomb with two strikes.
 
The Yellow Jackets came back and score three runs of their own in the bottom half of the inning and then the bats went quiet. Central added two more runs in the top of the third after Hassell doubled and Unger was hit by a pitch. Both guys were brought in on a Caetano Rochelle 2 RBI single.
 
MSUB bounced back with a two-run homerun in the bottom of the fourth to cut the wildcat lead to 8-5. The Wildcats went quietly in the top of the fifth and then the Yellow Jackets added on four more in the bottom half of the inning and then another one in the bottom of the sixth taking the 10-8 lead.
 
"We started off really hot which was great." Said Coach Storey. "It's always nice when we can have a good lead in the early parts of the game. We just didn't close out and shut the door like I would have liked. We let them hang around a little too long and Billings is a good team and well coached. They capitalized on that. But at the same time, we still did a lot of good things. Josh Touhey came in at a tough spot but did well for us. We just have to come back and try to take two tomorrow and get the series win. It's going to be tough against this good Billings team. But if we execute and do some things like we did today we should be in a good spot to take both."
 
Central was not able to get any closer to the Yellow Jacket lead. MSUB took game two by score of 10-8. The second half of the series will start tomorrow at 11:00 a.m.