May 15, 2004
IOWA CITY, Iowa - For the Purdue baseball team on Saturday, it was a tale of two teams as the Boilermakers opened a twinbill at Duane Banks Field with an inspirational extra-inning win over Iowa, 6-4, then fell flat in an 8-3 loss in the nightcap.
The double header split moved Purdue's record to 25-25 overall and 14-13 in the Big Ten. With Ohio State sweeping a twinbill from Northwestern on Saturday, Purdue remained in sixth place, the final qualifying position for the Big Ten Tournament, two games ahead of Northwestern with five games left to play.
In the day's opening game, Purdue overcame an early two-run deficit to claim the win in 10 innings. Sophomore John Hunter (West Lafayette, Ind.) and junior Andy Dahl (Fair Oaks, Calif.) provided the Purdue fireworks in Game One, each hitting a home run, and sophomore Trae Dauby (Dale, Ind.) shut down the Hawkeye bats to earn the win in relief, his fifth of the year.
Trailing 2-0 in the fourth, Hunter launched a two-run home run deep over the left field wall, scoring senior Ben Fritz (Minnetonka, Minn.) before him. The longball was Hunter's eighth of the season, his league-best seventh in Big Ten games.
An Iowa run in the home half of the fourth was answered in the fifth when freshman Eric Osborn (Fishers, Ind.) led off the inning with a triple into the right field corner and scored two batters later on a sacrifice fly off the bat of senior Mitch Koester (Effingham, Ill.).
Dauby entered the game in the fifth inning and held the Hawkeyes off the scoreboard for five innings, yielding just three hits. Dauby was rewarded for his effort in the 10th inning when the Purdue bats came to life again.
Leading off the 10th was Dahl, who smacked the first pitch of the inning over the left-centerfield wall for his fifth homer of the season, giving Purdue a 4-3 lead. Koester lined a double over the shortstop's head and scored two batters later on a single through the left side of the Hawkeye defense by freshman Mitch Hilligoss (Windsor, Ill.). Two wild pitches and a fly ball scored Hilligoss with the Boilermakers' sixth run of the game.
Senior closer Jason Driscoll (Mishawka, Ind.) pitched the bottom of the 10th inning for his seventh save of the season. The save ties Driscoll with Andy Swain (1988) for third on the single-season record list at Purdue.
The high of the win lasted until the early innings of the second game when Iowa grabbed a 4-0 lead on a grand slam off the bat of Jim Reid in the bottom of the third. One inning later, Mike best lined a bases-loaded double into the gap in left-center, scoring three more runs to give the Hawkeyes a 7-0 lead.
Purdue cut the lead by three in the fifth inning, loading the bases with singles by Osborn and Dahl and a hit-by-pitch to Koester and scoring on a hit-by-pitch to junior Mike Coles (Hammond, Ind.), a sacrifice fly by Hilligoss and a successful double steal with Coles swiping second and Koester stealing the plate.
However, Iowa would ice the game with a run in the bottom of the fifth to gain a two-games-to-one advantage in the weekend series with one remaining.
Purdue and Iowa meet for the last time this weekend on Sunday for a 1 p.m. series finale.