SIU Baseball Saluki Nine fend off EIU Panthers, 9-8

CHARLESTON - The Southern Illinois baseball program overcame a five-run Eastern Illinois rally, with Alex Lyon scoring the game-winning run in the ninth inning for a 9-8 SIU win at Coaches Stadium.

SIU (17-12) jumped out to 5-1 and 8-3 leads. EIU (16-17) scored five runs in the eighth inning, aided by a bases-loaded, two-out dropped fly ball to suddenly tie the game. Alex Lyon drew a leadoff walk in the ninth inning. He moved to second on a wild pitch, third on a fly-out, and scored on an error. Trey McDaniel pitched a scoreless bottom half of the ninth and earned his first win of the season.

"The main thing is to win. I would rather win ugly than lose pretty," SIU head coach Ken Henderson said. "We found a way to win. We did some good things, but we certainly did not play great baseball. We can clean it up, and we have to clean it up. But we didn't quit. It would have been easy to quit after we gave up that five-spot in the eighth, but we bounced right back and found a way to get it done."

With the wind blowing out, EIU started the scoring with a wind-aided leadoff homer in the bottom of the first inning. SIU starter Mason Hiser bounced back and didn't allow another run until the sixth inning. While Hiser was pitching scoreless innings, SIU's offense played longball to take the lead. Alex Lyon took the first pitch of the fourth inning out of the park to tie the game. Aiden McMahan homered in the fifth and Addison Fugitt homered to straightaway center in the sixth.

Every spot in the order reached base at least once, led by multihit games for Nikola Vasic, Ian Walters and Fugitt. Southern scored at least once in five of the game's final six innings. SIU's vaunted running game also helped produce runs, going 7-for-8 stealing bases in the game, but SIU also struck out 13 times.

SIU's win snapped a streak of five-straight games in the series in which the home team had won. The Salukis improved to 8-4 in one-run games this year and 7-1 in midweek games. Southern Illinois heads to Peoria, Ill., for a three-game series against Bradley, which boasts the nation's best team ERA. First pitch on Friday night is 6 p.m.