Baseball

North Florida Outlasts SIUE's Long Ball
         MONTGOMERY, Ala. - The home runs kept coming, but the winning came to a halt on Monday as the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville baseball team fell to the University of North Florida 7-3 in game six of the NCAA-II Baseball Championship Series.
         All of the Cougars' (41-26) runs came on solo home runs by Mark Bugger (Edwardsville) in the fourth inning, Steve Berra (St. Charles, Mo.) in the fifth and Chad Opel (Edwardsville) in the sixth.
         "We needed to put more people on base," said SIUE Coach Gary Collins. ":We have not had a rally yet in this series. We just keep hitting them out,"
         Josh Clark (Olalla, Wash.) started on the mound for the Cougars and was the victim of five unearned runs in the bottom of the third inning. The Ospreys scored five runs after back-to-back errors by Opel and Bugger. The big inning was capped by a two-run home run by Ben Johanning.
         "Their guy (Tod Ewasko) pitched better than we hit," said Collins. "And the big inning killed us."
         The Cougars had eight hits and just one hit in nine at bats with a runner on base.
         "Ewasko just kept throwing spinning sliders and we kept popping them up," said Bugger. "We didn't change the way we went up to the plate. We kept looking for fastball, and he kept throwing breaking balls.
         The Cougars, who have eight home runs in the championship series, will now play in the loser's bracket against the winner of Kutztown (38-18) and Central Missouri State (49-9) on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. Matt Wilkinson (9-1) is expected to start on the mound for SIUE.
         -siue-