Box Score (PDF)Â | Season Statistics
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - Baseball is a game of numbers, and WKU sure put up some big ones Tuesday night in a 22-17 victory over Austin Peay. A team season-high eight homeruns accounted for 17 of the 22 Hilltoppers who touched home.
Topper Notes
- The game had a combined 39 runs, 39 hits, 20 walks, 27 strikeouts and nine homeruns - eight by the Hilltoppers. WKU became the fourth team in Division I to hit eight long balls in a single game, falling just shy of Alabama State's nine vs. Grambling State on April 23.
- Wyatt Featherston, Kevin Lambert and Thomas Peter each hit two homeruns; Lambert and Peter with a pair of two-run shots, while Featherston added a pair of solos. Coming into the game, the Hilltoppers had three multi-homerun games all season and they doubled that mark in one contest.
- Kaleb Duckworth started the scoring with a grand slam in the first inning, when WKU put seven runs on the board (which included a two-run blast by Lambert and a solo homerun by Featherston). It was the first Hilltopper grand slam since Hunter Wood's vs. Jacksonville State on Feb. 25.
- Tyler Robertson hit a three-run dinger in the fifth inning to tie the game at 16-16; the first long ball of his WKU career. The second baseman was not retired all evening, as he went 4-for-4 with a walk, sacrifice bunt, three runs scored, five driven in and two stolen bases.
- In all, eight Hilltopper starters had multi-hit games, eight had multi-run games and eight had as least one run batted in. Duckworth and Wood each walks three times, while Peter drew a pair of free passes. The team combined for 48 total bases with eight long balls, three doubles and 10 singles.
- Facing a 16-11 deficit at the end of the fourth, the WKU bullpen allowed only one run with 10 strikeouts in the final five frames. The majority of that came from Jackson Sowell, who earned the win by pitching the final three innings, striking out a career-high seven Governors while keeping them off the board.
- The five-run deficit the Hilltoppers faced, and came back from, tied for the largest comeback win so far this season. In WKU's last midweek contest at Murray State on April 18, they fell behind 5-0 after six innings.
- The Hilltoppers scored more than 20 runs in a game for the first time since their 24-8 victory vs. Kentucky at Bowling Green Ballpark on April 20, 2010. It was the first time since an 11-6 victory vs. Belmont on March 15, 2011, that WKU had 20-plus hits in a game.
- It was the first time since that Kentucky game the team hit four-plus homeruns in a contest, as we will have to search the record books for the last eight-dinger game in program history. WKU had hit 24 homeruns on the season coming into the game, which included eight long balls by the Hilltoppers in their previous 19 games combined,
- In total, the two teams combined to use 17 pitchers who threw 425 pitches. Of the Hilltoppers 27 defensive outs, only three were ground balls.
What's Up Next
WKU will look to bottle up these hot bats when the team takes on Louisiana Tech in a three-game series from Friday, April 28-30 in Ruston. The Bulldogs did not have a midweek game scheduled and stand at 27-14 overall with an 8-10 record in Conference USA games.
