TUCSON, Ariz. - Marian University baseball dropped their final game of the Tucson Invitational by a 7-4 final to Wesleyan finishing the spring trip with a 6-4 record.  The six wins marks the winningest spring trip since the 1999 season when the Sabres went 6-3 at the Gene Cusic Classic.

"We needed more energy," said head coach Jason Bartelt following the loss.  "We've been beat up these past couple days with a lot of games in a short amount of time.  We played well, but not good enough to win, had a couple of mistakes that hurt us, and Wesleyan is a quality opponent.  A couple different plays here and there and it may have been a different outcome."

The Cardinals jumped on the Sabres early with a pair of runs in the first two innings to take an early 4-0 lead.  Tony Grannis was able to lift a sacrifice fly into left field to score Dustin Hodgson in the top of the third to cut the deficit down to 4-1 before a two run fifth put Marian down by just one run.

Three singles to start the fifth inning allowed Mitchel Buss to drive in his 11th run of the season and an RBI double from Tyler Thompson capped off the inning.  Grannis would be thrown out at the plate on the Thompson double as well in a good relay from the Wesleyan defense.

The Cardinals answered with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the inning but the MU offense had a spark in the top of the seventh to stay alive.  Cody Schaefer drove in the run off a sacrifice fly, but the Wesleyan offense was able to tack on an insurance run in the eighth to conclude the scoring at 7-4.

Kellen Shea took the loss in his first decision of the season, but the bullpen picked him up nicely holding Wesleyan to three runs in 6.1 innings.

"The bullpen was one of our strengths all week," commented bullpen on the relief pitching.  "We were able to find success when we had good starts, and the bullpen gave us enough innings today to give us a chance."

Buss was the only Sabre to have a multi-hit game going 3-4 with one run batted in.  Grannis had a solid game defensively in left field for the Sabres with a team-high five putouts and a pair of assists.

"Every year we have goals coming down and there is always the goal of coming back over .500 and we were able to accomplish that," said Bartelt on the trip as a whole.  "We faced a lot of good pitching and the way the schedule lined up we ended up facing a lot of top of the rotation guys throughout the week so we were tested.  We didn't get any gimme games and that just shows the character on this team and the battle that they went through this week.  We were also able to get better every day as the trip went on, had some rust early, shook that off, and were just simply able to get better." 

Marian travels to Otterbein next weekend for a three-game series that kicks off with a doubleheader Saturday, March 19 at noon.

--FightBlueFight--