Baseball: Logan Nelson-led Marquette takes down Aurora Christian

OTTAWA – The Marquette Crusaders have been waiting for a decent day of weather on which to play baseball, and when it arrived Friday afternoon, they and junior Logan Nelson were ready for it.

On a cool but sunny day at Masinelli Field, Nelson was solid in his first start of the season, going five strong innings, allowing three hits, two scratch runs and no walks while striking out eight. For good measure, he also got the key hit of the game – a three-run double in the third inning – to lead MA to a 9-2 nonconference victory over Aurora Christian, lifting its record 8-0.

Nelson, who had pitched only a few innings in relief before the outing, could have held the Eagles scoreless if not for a few plays that could have been made before a bloop, two-run single in the fourth by the Eagles’ Ben Guerva. However, he bounced back with a 1-2-3 fifth before yielding to Carson Zellers and Taylor Waldron for one scoreless inning apiece.

“Logan was good. He’s one of our dudes,” Marquette coach Todd Hopkins said. “He made a good pitch, the kid (Guerva) did a good job and put the bat on the ball and they were able to score, but for the day, he pitched a really good game. We wanted him to do his thing, get some innings under his belt after throwing primarily in relief last year and so far this year.

“In him, [Aiden] Thompson, Taylor and Carson, we have some arms to go to and [Nelson] is going to start a lot of games for us this year.”

Said Nelson, “Because I’d been focusing more on my slider, today I was trying to work on my curveball more because it hasn’t been working so far, so I threw it a lot more today, and I was pleased with how it went. … But we did pretty well as a team, though.”

MA went in front when Nelson drew a lead-off walk from Aurora Christian starter Jackson Robertson, stole second, took third on Tommy Durdan’s grounder and scored on a double by Beau Ewers. They added a run in the second, Julian Alexander scoring on back-to-back Aurora Christian errors, but they broke it open in the third.

Beau Ewers walked and one out later scored on a Brady Ewers two-bagger. After a walk to Waldron, Zellers stroked an RBI single and Alexander added an infield hit to load the bases for Nelson, who dropped in a three-run, opposite field double to left. He later scored on another Eagles miscue.

Waldron’s run-scoring groundout in the fourth off reliever McCade Weber created the final.

“We have to do a better job in our at bats and put the bat on the ball with runners in scoring position,” Hopkins said. “In the first inning, Tommy put the bat on it, grounded to second to get Logan to third. Taylor did that with the bases loaded in the fourth to get us a run. We didn’t spank the ball today, but those are things we have to be better at.”

For the day, Aurora Christian, which got two of their four hits from Diego Huerta, gave up seven walks and committed five errors.

“We gave them some extra outs and that’s never a good thing, but especially against a quality team like Marquette,” said Aurora Christian coach Andy Zorger, his team now 0-3-1. “They had some strategically placed hits, but our starter tends to nibble too much around the zone and had 70-some pitches through three innings, so we needed to be more efficient. We had some errors and they took advantage of it all.

“Defensively, we weren’t very sharp and that was frustrating. Offensively, we couldn’t string anything together. Credit their pitcher. He kept us off balance and had good velocity.”

Marquette’s Saturday game against Tri-Valley has been canceled because of expected rain, so their next game will be at Tri-County foe Roanoke-Benson on Tuesday.