TUCSON, ARIZ.\u00a0 (VCSU. com)\u2013 The Viking offense erupted for 23 hits and 25 runs Thursday afternoon as the Valley City State baseball team slugged its way to a 25-15 victory over North Central University.<\/p>\n
The Vikings batted .451 (23-51) in the high-scoring game and scored in each of the first four innings to build an 10-1 lead they would not relinquish. VCSU posted another eight runs in the sixth inning to go up 18-5 before North Central cut the deficit to 18-12 after the eighth inning. The Vikings put the game away for good with seven more runs in the top of the ninth inning.<\/p>\n
VCSU finished with 25 runs on 23 hits and six North Central errors. North Central totaled 15 runs on 16 hits and four Viking errors.<\/p>\n
“It was a wild game,” said head coach Casey Olney<\/a>. “The ball was flying all over the field with some help from the wind. Our hitters maintained focus and did not give away any at bats and a lot of good things happened for them. A lot of guys played and were able to contribute, which is a great thing early in the season.”<\/p>\n Thirteen different Vikings collected hits in the game, including four that had three hits each. Austin Smith<\/a> went 3-for-4 with two runs and two RBIs. Xavier Merritt<\/a> was 3-for-5 with three runs and an RBI. Sal Avila<\/a> homered as he went 3-for-5, scored three runs and drove in three. Jorun Hamre<\/a> had a big game as well, going 3-for-3 with a run and four RBIs. Kody Lane<\/a> had a pair of hits and drove in three.<\/p>\n Freshman Marcus Niemann<\/a> started on the mound for VCSU and was solid. Niemann lasted 4 1\/3 innings, allowing four hits and four runs. He walked three and struck out one. Aaron Schuster<\/a> pitched 2 2\/3 innings in relief to pick up the win. Schuster gave up four hits and three earned runs. He walked one and struck out four. Nathan Demarais<\/a>, normally a position player for the Vikings, ate up the final two innings on the mound with VCSU holding a big lead.<\/p>\n Up next:<\/strong> Valley City State (2-6) plays two games on Friday in Tucson. The Vikings face Dakota Wesleyan at 4 p.m. CST in a 7-inning game, and then play Northwestern College at 7:30 p.m. in a 9-inning game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TUCSON, ARIZ.\u00a0 (VCSU. com)\u2013 The Viking offense erupted for 23 hits and 25 runs Thursday afternoon as the Valley City State baseball team slugged its way to a 25-15 victory over North Central University. The Vikings batted .451 (23-51) in the high-scoring game and scored in each of the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":98366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166690,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166689\/revisions\/166690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/98366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}