La Crosse, Wisc. – The La Crosse Loggers earned a come-from-behind 4-3 victory over the visiting St. Cloud Rox in front of 2,011 onlookers on Thursday night at the friendly confines of Copeland Park to take the first game of a two-game set.<\/p>\n
It didn’t look good early for the Lumbermen as the Rox greeted Loggers starter Chase Zidlicky (Middlebury) with three runs right away in the top of the first, on three hits, to give the visitors an early 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
But Zidlicky would settle in after that and La Crosse plated one in the second thanks to a solo shot from Max Kalk (Ball State) and another in the third after an RBI single from Savion Flowers (Sacramento State) plated Eason Hurd (Madison College) to make it 3-2 after three complete.<\/p>\n
After the rough first, Zidlicky would go on to toss three shutout innings and would be followed by Noe Novella (Biola) who tossed four innings of shutout baseball to keep the Rox at bay.<\/p>\n
St. Cloud pitching would do the same, thanks to a great relief effort from Levi Nyberg, who limited the Loggers to just one run over 4.2 innings, striking out five to keep the score at 3-2 until the bottom of the eighth.<\/p>\n
Nyberg would strike out the first two Logger hitters before Eli Small (Kent State) came to the plate and drove a 2-2 offering over the left field wall to knot the game up at 3-3.<\/p>\n
Nicholas Mazzotta (Wagner) would toss a scoreless ninth to send it to the home half.\u00a0 Kalk led the bottom of the ninth off by drawing a free pass off of Rox reliever Cole Prasse and pinch-hitter Mana Lau Kong (Hawaii) would rocket a single to left centerfield to put Loggers on the corners with no one out.\u00a0 Field manager Justin Ramsey then summoned Landen Lozier (Kansas) off the bench to pinch hit and 1-1 pitch to deep left centerfield over the drawn in outfield to plate Kalk and send Copeland Park into a frenzy, securing the 4-3 victory.<\/p>\n
Mazzotta (2-0) earned the win in relief and helped lift the Loggers to 17-8 in the second half and 39-20 overall while St. Cloud fell to 13-12 in the second half and 37-24 overall.<\/p>\n
The same two teams will meet again on Friday night back at Copeland Park for a 6:35 pm first pitch with gates opening at 5:30 pm.<\/p>\n