Forsythe, Sivertsen push Baseball past Evansville

Saturday, April 9

Evansville, Ind.

2:00 PM

Southern Illinois University

10-19, 2-0

Evansville

17-11, 0-2

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	Runs R	Hits H	Errors E
Southern Illinois	0	1	0	2	0	1	3	1	0	8	11	1
Evansville	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	3	4	11	0

04/09/2011 | 12:00:00 | Baseball

Box Score

April 9, 2011

By Jason Clay
SIUSalukis.com

Box Score

EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Cody Forsythe allowed just one run in seven innings and Jordan Sivertsen scored three times and drove in three runs to lead the Southern Illinois baseball team to a 8-4 victory over Evansville here Saturday at Braun Stadium.

Southern Illinois (10-19, 2-0 MVC) secures its first series victory of the season with the win that backed up Friday's 5-1 victory. The Salukis have now won three-straight games for the first time this year.

The win for Forsythe is his first since March 6 and it evens his record out at 3-3 on the year. He scattered eight hits in the game, gave up that one run and had four strikeouts against only one walk.

"We've had tremendous performances back-to-back," interim head coach Ken Henderson said referring to his starting pitching in the series. "Cody threw well again today and obviously Cameron (Maldonado) was outstanding last night and they gave our offense a chance to get going. We've done a great job pitching with the lead."

Sivertsen went 2-for-3 on the day. His three runs scored tied his career-high while his three RBIs matched his season-high. He hit his fifth home run this year, a no-doubt three-run shot to left in the seventh that gave SIU a 7-0 lead and all but put the game away.

SIU had 11 hits in the game, which was its sixth-straight game with 10 or more hits. Sophomore Brock Harding had three hits and Southern hit four doubles Saturday.

"We are moving runners," Henderson said. "We get runners on second, we move them, we get sac fly's, we're executing on offense. I'm excited that we are swinging the bats, but I'm more excited about the fact that we are executing and taking advantage of our opportunities to score runs."

Evansville pitcher Cole Isom fell to 3-3, as he drew the loss. He gave up five hits and three runs in four innings.

The Salukis were able to manufacture a run in the second. Two singles followed up by a sacrifice bunt and then a sacrifice fly from Blake Pinnon gave the Dawgs the early 1-0 lead.

Pinnon then drove in his second run of the game in his next at-bat in the fourth with a single to left. Jake Welch followed with a double to the wall in left to score Pinnon from first and push SIU's lead up to 3-0.

Evansville got runners on second base in both the fourth and fifth innings, but Forsythe buckled down both times and did not allow a run to come home.

In the top of the sixth the Salukis had runners on first and third with two outs. SIU put on a double steal and it paid off, as Nick Johnson stole second safely and Sivertsen was able to sneak home on the play to push Southern's lead up to 4-0.

Sivertsen then blasted his two-out, three-run homer to left field in the seventh.

The Aces loaded the bases up with three-straight singles, all with one out, in the bottom of the seventh. Eric Stamets came through for UE with a sacrifice fly, but that would be the only run Evansville would get in the inning. Johnson kept it that way by making a difficult catch against the wall in right field on Greg Wallace's fly ball to end inning.

Forsythe exited after the seventh with the 7-1 lead. Brian Bajer tacked on another run with his eighth-inning sacrifice fly.

Evansville did get three runs in the ninth, but Southern's lead was too large to come back from. Tyler Dray recorded the last out in the ninth, as he entered with two runners on and the tying run on deck. He picked up his fourth save of the season and second of the series.