SDSU baseball claims series win to jumpstart conference push

BROOKINGS — The South Dakota State baseball team played its first home series over the weekend and are hoping to gain some momentum after winning two of three games against North Dakota State at Erv Huether Field.

The Jackrabbits lost the first game of the series on Friday 6-1 but then swept a doubleheader on Saturday with wins of 13-5 and 11-1 in eight innings. With the series result, SDSU is now 7-17 overall and 2-4 in conference play.

SDSU lost four of its first five games of the season against UTSA, Incarnate Word and Tarleton State.

The Jacks then won their next two games against Tarleton State before losing two of three against Central Arkansas.

The Jacks would then head back north and play in four-straight one-run games. It started with a 5-4 loss to Nebraska in Lincoln. They then played three games at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. SDSU beat Northwestern 5-4 and then lost 3-2 in 10 innings to Minnesota and 5-4 to Southern Illinois.

The Jacks lost 9-0 to Kansas State on the road. Their first Summit League series was against Oral Roberts on the road last weekend and they were swept with losses of 4-3, 3-1 and 12-2. After the series sweep to the Golden Eagles, SDSU lost a pair of one-run games against Oklahoma State.

SDSU head coach Rob Bishop said the Jacks got off to a bad start with that first series of the season, but he’s liked the way they’ve played since then. He said the one-run losses have been hard on the guys, but he thinks it’s good that SDSU was competitive as the non-conference came to a close.

“At UTSA, I felt like we played poorly,” Bishop said. “After that, you know, we didn’t play poorly. We played well a lot of times and just didn’t score enough runs. Losing a ton of really close games is obviously frustrating and it doesn’t matter to your guys if you’re playing K-State or Oklahoma State or Minnesota or Big Ten teams. It still just feels like losing.

“I was I wasn’t happy, obviously, with the record, but I was happy that, you know, again, outside of that first weekend, I thought we just played really hard-nosed, competitive baseball, and I just felt like we needed to just kind of get a little offensive momentum.”

SDSU gave up 73 runs in its first five games of the season. Since then, the Jacks have only given up double-digit runs in two games.

Senior Sam Schlect is the Jacks’ top starter, with a 2-1 record and an earned run average of 3.26. Like Schlect, junior Sam Novotny has made six starts and has a 2-1 record with an ERA of 4.86. Kaden Rylance has made six appearances and three starts and has an ERA of 8.22.

Austin Henry has made 12 appearances and has pitched 11 innings. He leads the team with a 1.64 ERA. Jacob Sjuts has made eight appearances and has pitched 12 innings and has an ERA of 3.00.

Bishop said he thinks his pitchers have settled in after that tough start and now they just need to limit walks as the Jacks are fifth out of six teams in the Summit League in walks with 139.

“I think our top six or seven guys have been pretty consistent and pretty good. … Those first five games, we gave up a ton of runs. We’ve pitched really well and we’ve held teams down really since then. I think the next step for us is we just need to do a better job with freebies. You know, we’re still walking a few too many guys,” Bishop said.

SDSU is third in team batting average in the Summit League with a .260 average. The Jacks are second in the conference in runs (135,), tied for the lead in home runs (15) and have the most doubles (42).

Sophomore center fielder Owen Sigert leads the Jacks with a .337 batting average and he has eight RBIs. Sophomore infielder Nolan Grawe is hitting .323 and has nine doubles and 18 RBIs. Junior infielder Luke Luskey is the Jacks’ power hitter with a team-high four home runs. Freshman outfielder Carter Taylor and redshirt freshman catcher Nate Wachter are each hitting .300.

Bishop said he needs to have more consistency from the middle of his lineup if the Jacks want to have a potent offense in Summit League play.

“Our middle-of-the-order guys, they have to be guys that are scary to the other team,” Bishop said. “And we’ve just been a little bit inconsistent in the middle of our order, to be honest. Some of it’s been injury related, some of it’s just been, you know, probably trying to do too much.

“... It’s been better again the last five games. So we’ll see down in this stretch of Summit League games if we can just kind of be grinders and be a little bit more consistent. We talk a lot about trying to score runs with your outs. You know, you can’t always have to rely on hits. So I think just doing a good job situationally hitting will help us.”

Oral Roberts is 6-0 through the first two weekends of conference play. Omaha is 4-2, Northern Colorado is 3-2, SDSU is 2-4, St. Thomas is 1-4 and North Dakota State is 1-5.

The top four teams will play in the conference tournament in St. Paul May 20-23. SDSU missed out on the Summit League Tournament last year as the Jacks came in fifth place.

Bishop thinks that ORU is the clear favorite in the conference, but after that, the teams are pretty equal. The goal for the Jacks is to get to the conference tournament and see what happens after that. Bishop said in order to do that, SDSU has to play solid defense and pitch well.

“I think you have to have consistent pitching and defense for sure,” Bishop said. “That’s a year in and year out thing. The teams that pitch and defend are in that top four. Then the separator from there really is you know, can you do something special offensively? And winning some series on the road.

“ORU has already started to separate themselves [from the rest of the conference]. But boy, when I look at the rest of the league, there’s a lot of parity. … I think all of the teams are really solid, so it’s going to be a tight margin and generally, I think just pitching and defending consistently is going to be [what puts us over the top].”

SDSU will play Crieghton on Wednesday night at 6 p.m. The Jacks will then play a three-game series at Northern Colorado this weekend. SDSU returns home on March 31 with a 3 p.m. game against Briar Cliff and then will have a three-game series in Brookings April 2-4.