GREELEY, Colo. - The Mavericks are officially heading back to the Summit League Tournament for the fourth season in a row as they held off Northern Colorado and took the final game of the season 4-3 Saturday afternoon.
Omaha ends the regular season at 21-26 with a 9-14 record in the Summit League, while the Bears finish their 2023 campaign in fifth place in the conference at 11-34 overall and 8-16 in league play. The Mavericks will head to Fargo as the No. 4 seed in the tournament and will face No. 1 Oral Roberts in the first round next Wednesday. No. 2 North Dakota State and No. 3 South Dakota State also qualified for the tournament.
Innings 1-3
The Mavericks found themselves trailing early again as the Bears scored three on a couple of doubles in the first. That would be all UNC would get, though, as
Preston Tenney settled in and completely blanked them for the rest of his outing.
Innings 4-6
Omaha gradually started chipping away at the deficit with a couple of sac flies, first getting one from
Brennen Bales in the fourth and another from
Matt Goetzmann in the sixth.
Haiden Hunt came around to score on both sacrifices. Meanwhile, Tenney held the Bears to just two more hits through the sixth inning.
Innings 7-9
The Mavericks finally got even in the top of the seventh as
Mike Boeve worked a full count and launched a moonshot to right to tie things up at 3-3. Then, Northern Colorado's pitcher walked the next two batters and plunked the third to load the bases for
Eddie Satisky, who lined one right off the second baseman's glove to give Omaha its first lead of the day at 4-3.
With the Mavericks now in front,
Wyatt Sellers was brought in to relieve Tenney and promptly threw a 1-2-3 inning. Sellers came back in for the eighth and, after two quick strikeouts, ran into to some trouble that culminated in a bases-loaded jam. Fortunately, he got through the inning unscathed with one more strikeout to keep it 4-3 Omaha.
In the bottom of the ninth, Sellers showed no signs of slowing down as he immediately fanned the first batter and got the second to pop up to second, before punching out the final batter of the day for his sixth strikeout in three innings to send Omaha to the Summit League Tournament.
Inside the Box Score
This marks the second outing in a row for Sellers in which he went three shutout innings with a career-high six strikeouts to earn the save, previously doing so last Sunday at North Dakota State.
With his sixth win of the season, Tenney is the first Maverick to win this many games in a single season since 2019, when
Payton Kinney and
Joey Machado won 11 and six games, respectively.
Hunt was instrumental in Omaha's victory today as he scored three of the team's four runs, having reached bases three times on two walks and a hit by pitch. This is the fourth time this season he has scored at least three runs in one game.
Boeve's game-tying home run gives him four homers and 32 RBIs on the year in 44 games. He is only one RBI away from matching his 2022 total despite playing in 13 fewer games so far.
Up Next
The Mavericks will have a few days rest before heading to Fargo, North Dakota to begin the Summit League Tournament on Wednesday, May 24, when they face No. 1 Oral Roberts at 12 p.m.
