SPRINGFIELD – Dylan Leach and Cody Kelly each drove in four runs and the Missouri State pitching staff took a no-hitter into the seventh inning Thursday night on the way to a 10-3 victory for the Bears over Drury in the seventh edition of the ‘Battle for Bell’ at Hammons Field.
Leach put the Bears on the board with a two-run homer in the second inning that followed a Zack Stewart leadoff single, and Missouri State broke the game open with a five-run third. After loading the bases with no outs, Taeg Gollert and Stewart both drove in runs with outs before Kelly launched a three-run homer onto the Bill Rowe Indoor Training Facility beyond the right field wall for a 7-0 lead.
Meanwhile on the mound, Brandt Thompson faced the minimum through three innings in the start, Eric Loomis struck out a pair in a hitless fourth, and Brendan Beaver followed by retiring all six batters he faced.
Drury logged its first hit with a one-out single in the seventh off Dalen Stewart, adding a double and sacrifice fly to make the score 7-2.
Leach and Kelly struck again in the bottom of the seventh, with Leach driving home a pair with a double and scoring on a Kelly single.
Michael Lindsey struck out the side in the eighth and Garrett Ferguson pitched the ninth, yielding a two-out solo home run for the final 10-3 margin. The six MSU pitchers combined to allow three hits and strike out 11 Panthers.
The annual exhibition game is played to raise money for the local Howard Bell ALS Clinic at CoxHealth, which provides coordinated care and support to ALS patients in the region. Bell, who passed away from ALS in 2013, shared close connections with the MSU and DU baseball programs, and was a three-year letterman for the Bears in the 1980s and the Mid-Continent Conference Player of the Year for MSU in 1986.
Missouri State concludes its fall schedule with the third game of the fall world series on Friday at 2 p.m. at Hammons Field. The front gate will be open and admission is free, however game day stadium amenities are not available.
The regular season begins Feb. 16 with a three-game series at Louisiana Monroe.
