March 24, 2001
The Purdue baseball team almost had their best comeback victory of the season in game one of its doubleheader with Minnesota, losing 11-10. In game two, Dave Gassner got on track, pitching his best game of the year, helping lead Purdue to a 4-2 victory.
In game one, Purdue found itself trailing Minnesota 10-1 after just 1.2 innings. Starter Chadd Blasko was credited with four earned runs in the first 1.2 innings, and gave up a total of nine. Purdue got five runs back in the bottom of the second inning. Mike Duursma walked, followed by a Daniel Underwood single. Dave Blomberg singled to load the bases for Nate Sickler, who drilled a rare inside the park grand slam. The ball was hit sharply to the leftfielder Scott Howard, who was at the warning track, but failed to come away with the catch as the ball bounced off the wall and back into the outfield. Howard crashed hard into the wall in pursuit, which allowed all the runs to score. Howard left the game, but was not seriously injured. For Sickler, it was his second home run of the season. Kris Luce scored the other run of the inning. Luce reached base when he was hit by a pitch, then advanced to second on a wild pitch. Josh Krogman replaced Craig Molldrem as pitcher for the Golden Gophers, and on his first pitch gave up a double to David Harrell.
Freshman Billy Lester came on to relieve Chadd Blasko, and pitched the remainder of the game. He finished with 5.1 innings pitched, allowed six hits, two unearned runs and struck out three. In Lester's last two outings, he has pitched 7.1 innings, allowing no earned runs.
Both teams scored a run in their respective halves of the sixth inning. With Minnesota leading 11-6 entering the bottom of the seventh, Purdue scored when Brad Kriner, who came in as a pinch runner for Simon Klink after Klink led off the inning with a sharp single to centerfield, scored.
The Boilermakers made it interesting in the seventh, adding three more runs. Harrell led off with a double, followed by a Gusich single. Harrell then advanced to third. Kriner had a sacrifice bunt to advance Gusich to second base. The bases got loaded up when Mike Duursma walked. Daniel Underwood singled to score Harrell and advance Gusich over to third. Dave Blomberg also singled, which scored Gusich and Duursma, but was thrown out at second on a questionable call. Blomberg attempted to advance to second after the leftfielder booted the throw, and was called out on a 7-5-3-4 out. Sickler struck out swinging to end game one.