TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – The Franklin College baseball team met the Rose-Hulman Engineers on Tuesday (Apr. 19) night for two games between two teams sitting near the top of the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC).

The Grizzlies (22-8, 7-3 HCAC) dropped both contest to the Engineers (18-7, 9-3 HCAC), with Rose winning by scores of 12-10 and 10-4.

Game One: Rose-Hulman 12 – Franklin 10
The Engineers jumped out to a 4-0 lead through two but Franklin got a pair back in the third with an error allowing Andrew Wallace to score and AJ Sanders plating a run with a sac fly to cut the lead in half. Franklin grabbed their first lead of the day in the fifth when Tysen Lipscomb, Logan Demkovich and Matt Earley driving in runs on three straight plate appearances to make it a 5-4 game.

Sanders and Lipscomb drove in runs with consecutive base knocks in the sixth and two more runners would come home in the seventh to make it a 9-4 FC lead. But disaster came in the form of an eight-run seventh inning for Rose and the Grizzlies unable to string together a rally in the final two innings.

Sanders went 3-for-5 at the plate and Lipscomb knocked in three runs to pace Franklin's offense.

Game Two: Rose-Hulman 10 – Franklin 4
Earley gave Franklin the early lead with a first inning RBI ground out, but the Engineers answered with two in the first and three more runs the following frame to lead 5-1 heading into the third inning.

Franklin scored twice in the third to halve the deficit, but would leave seven runners on base from the third-through-sixth innings. The Grizzlies got to within a run in the eighth but Rose put the game away with a five-run eighth inning and a perfect top of the ninth.

Damian Tillie (3-1) worked six innings of six-hit ball, walking four and striking out eight. Demkovich had two of Franklin's four hits in the second game, but the story was the 11 men left on base and 17 strikeouts from the Grizzly lineup.

Up Next
Franklin welcomes the Mount St. Joseph Lions to Center Grove HS on Saturday (Apr. 23) afternoon for their Senior Day festivities. First pitch is set for 1:30 p.m.