Junior Brandon Buday had four hits in the three-game series against UW-La Crosse. (Jasmine Li | Student Life)

The Washington University baseball team was fighting a titan over the weekend of March 23 and 24 when the No. 9 University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Eagles came to St. Louis for a three-game series. The Eagles are a Division III powerhouse who made a deep run in the NCAA tournament last season and have been ranked in the national top 10 all season long.

UW-La Crosse’s strength was on full display over the weekend, as it swept the Bears, outscoring them 37-20. With the three losses, WashU dropped to 14-8 on the season in its final games before beginning its conference season. 

Facing an elite opponent wouldn’t stop the Bears, who are on the outside looking in of the national top 25, from attempting to win the weekend. After taking an early two-run lead in the fourth inning, the Bears looked poised to win the first game of the series. However, a six-run top of the sixth inning for UW-Lacrosse put WashU behind. 

The Bears tried to mount a comeback, scoring two runs in the bottom of the seventh inning. After the Eagles scored two runs in the eighth to take an 8-4 lead, the Bears put runners on second and third in the ninth. UW-Lacrosse’s defense stayed strong, however, ending the game on a groundout to hand the Bears a loss. Sophomore Shane Pellegrino stood out for the Bears, adding two RBIs in the game and boosting his season batting average to .382. 

In the second game, WashU was in an offensive slugfest that saw a total of 29 runs scored and 33 hits. In a stunning 16-13 loss, five players had multi-hit games for the Bears, including senior outfielders Kaden Bernhard and Evan Minarovic, who had the Bears’ only extra-base hits in the game. 

However, the Bears’ high-powered offense wasn’t supported on the opposite end, with the WashU pitchers being lit up for six runs in the sixth inning and five runs in the eighth. The outbursts gave UW-Lacrosse a 16-10 lead that the Bears would fail to come back from. After play was halted due to darkness Saturday, the teams finished the last inning on Sunday. The Bears never stopped fighting and added three runs in the bottom of the ninth, but a fly out to center field ended the game with the visitors up 16-13. 

The final game of the weekend was played on Sunday, March 24 at 3:00 p.m. The contest would see all the steam run out for the Bears as WashU lost 13-3 in seven innings. The Bears’ pitchers struggled against the UW-La Crosse batters in this quick two-hour game, with three pitchers giving up three runs each in three innings to go down 9-1 early in the game. The Bears would add two more runs of their own in the bottom of the fifth inning thanks to sophomore Connor Lindsey’s double, but UW-La Crosse would add four runs in the top of the sixth before the game ended in the seventh. 

The Bears will go for a bounceback weekend with a four-game set against New York University (NYU), with the first pitch happening at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, March 29 at WashU’s Kelley Field. The Bears will begin their University Athletic Association season with this matchup. Last season, WashU and NYU finished third and fourth, respectively, in the five-team conference, and WashU won three out of four games against the Violets in a key series. The Bears will look to build off of last year’s success against their conference rivals this weekend.