SPRINGFIELD – Nick Rodriguez went 4-for-6 and hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the 14th inning Friday, and Spencer Nivens hit the first cycle for Missouri State since Matt Cepicky in 1998 as the MSU Bears topped the visiting Central Arkansas Bears by an 11-10 final in 14 innings in Missouri State’s longest game since Feb. 26, 2010.
The earliest home opener in Hammons Field history took 5 hours, 20 minutes to decide and featured numerous standout performances, with Nivens getting the scoring started with a solo homer in the bottom of the first inning. He picked up a single in the fourth, triple in the eighth and double in the 13th that setup Mason Greer’s game-tying sacrifice fly after UCA hit a solo home run in the top half, its only hit after the seventh inning.
Miles Halligan fired four hitless relief innings with seven strikeouts, and Corbin Bassham (1-0) threw the final three frames with three Ks and just the solo homer allowed.
After Nivens’ initial homer, Zack Stewart hit a two-run double for a 3-0 lead, and Izzy Lopez made it 5-2 in the third with a two-run double of his own.
A pair of two-out errors in the fifth helped hand UCA its first lead at 6-5, Nivens hit a tying sac fly in the bottom half, then Central Arkansas grabbed the lead again at 9-6 in the seventh after loading the bases with no out and plating three runs.
Nivens hit a two-run triple and scored in a wild pitch to tie it in the eighth, and neither team scored again until the 13th on UCA’s homer in the top half and Greer’s sac fly in the bottom half for a 10-10 deadlock.
After Bassham worked around two walks in the 14th, fellow freshman Taeg Gollert opened the bottom of the inning with a single, got to second on a wild pitch and scored the winning run on a Rodriguez single through the left side.
The teams combined to use 12 pitchers, who struck out 34 total batters and issued 25 walks.
Game two of the series is set for 2 p.m. Saturday.
