UH “Walks” Off With 6-3 Win Over Bearkats

By Cheval John

The Bearkats’ home opener against the Houston Cougars didn’t go exactly as planned on Tuesday night at Don Sanders Stadium.

A combination of bad pitching and errors caused the Bearkats to lose to the Cougars 6-3.

Reliever David Rumsey threw a base-loaded walk to Kyle Survance that started led to a three-run ninth inning for the Cougars.

Michael Burchett, who went down with the loss, issued back-to-back walks to Justin Montemayor and pinch hitter Casey Grayson to load the bases with one out in the top of the ninth.

“I think they were some timidness and I don’t know why” coach David Pierce said. “I really encourage them to go for it.”

Both teams combined for six errors in the game.

The first one occurred in the bottom of the first inning when Colt Atwood hit a ground ball that went under the glove of Cougar’s third baseman Kyle Kirk.

Atwood would later score the Bearkats’ (1-3) first run of the night thanks to an error by Cougars’ starting pitcher Aaron Garza that made it 1-0.

Kirk made up for the error as he ripped an RBI single to right field to tie it up at 1.

Hayden Simerly lauched a first pitch homerun to right field to put the Kats up 2-1.

The Cougars (3-1) tied it at 2 in the top of the fourth on a sacrifice fly by Jonathan Davis.

Luke Plucheck’s sacrifice fly to center field made it 3-2.

Though the Bearkats were able to get out of jams, the errors eventually caught up to them

Landon Appling led off the seventh on a two-base throwing error by Carter Burgess.

He reached third on a single by Frankie Ratliff. Barker was hit by a pitch to load the bases with no outs

That allowed Montemayor’s sacrifice fly to tied the game at 3.

Coach Pierce feels that his team will bounce back from this loss.

“They going to come out of it, but they got to work hard to come out of it,” Pierce said.

The Bearkats play University of Louisiana-Monroe this weekend at home.