This week's Cougar baseball action is slightly ahead of the normal schedule due to the Easter holiday, so their series against the Orediggers of Colorado School of Mines began on Thursday night. The lights seemed to be just a little too bright for the Cougars who dropped game one by a score of 8-20.
 
HOW IT HAPPENED:
 
The Orediggers held off a pair of Cougar hits in the top of the 1st inning and answered back in a big way by batting around in the bottom frame, scoring five runs on just four hits to take an early lead. The Cougs would close the gap, scoring two in the 2nd inning and three in the 3rd, but they were never truly able to close the gap with Mines keeping a multi-run cushion throughout the game. The Orediggers effectively put the game away when they scored eight runs in the 7th inning through four different Cougar pitchers, bumping the lead up to 6-18 before each team would score another pair before the end of the game to reach the final score of 8-20.
 
Offensively, the Cougars were led by transfer sophomore Tommy Orr who setting a season high in hits going 4-5, notching a pair of doubles, a homerun, scoring two runs and two RBI's. The strong hitting performance was also Orr's fifth multi-hit game in the past seven contests. Hunter Hays was the only other Cougar to record multiple hits, going 3-4 with a walk and a scoring a run and an RBI. Designated Hitter Sam Gallegos launched his third homer of the season, scored two runs and drove in another pair of RBI's.
 
The Cougar five-man pitching platoon used in today's series opener combined to allow 20 runs, 19 of which were earned, on 18 hits. The outing still resulted in 10 strikeouts, but those punchouts were outweighed by a dozen combined walks and hit batters.
 
WHAT IS NEXT:
 
The Cougars are back in Golden for another twilight tussle with the Orediggers, game time is set for 6:00 p.m.